OUR LOG KATRINA - Part TWO September 11th 2005 Fort Myers Florida Centennial Harbour Marina – Fort Myers Florida - 239-461-0775 – Website - www.marina33901.com NOTE 'Click' on any photo for larger size .. Saturday night the 10th at 11:00 pm Betty received a call from the Lee County Chapter of the American Red Cross .. she was told to be at the ‘new’ Fort Myers Airport at 08:30 am Sunday morning ready to head out .. on Sunday when we were at the Airport Betty was told that they were going to be heading to Pensacola Florida where the American Red Cross has set up a Regional Center for Hurricane KATRINA .. Betty was among the first of Lee Counties Red Cross Volunteers to be deployed .. this is the largest deployment that the Lee County Chapter has ever undertaken 10:30 am .. the Fort Myers Red Cross Volunteers flew to Atlanta Georgia and then on to Pensacola Florida … 04:00 pm .. once at Pensacola the Volunteers had a quick lunch / dinner .. Betty has two Sons that live in Pensacola .. her son Randy was able to catch up with Betty and the other Volunteers before they headed out .. after dinner they headed out for Laurel Mississippi in Vans .. 10:30 pm .. after six hours of driving Betty and the other Red Cross Volunteers made it to Laurel Mississippi about 09:00 pm .. since it was dark and there were few lights on around the City they had a hard time finding their way .. but by 10:30 pm they made it to a Methodist Church for the night .. once at the Church they were brought to the Fifth Floor where they spent the night sleeping on the floor .. September 12th 2005 Fort Myers Florida Centennial Harbour Marina – Fort Myers Florida - 239-461-0775 – Website - www.marina33901.com OPHELIA 09:00 am .. after their first night at the First United Methodist Church Betty and another Red Cross Volunteer drove to the Laurel Red Cross Service Center .. there were about 2,000 people there waiting outside the Service Center .. after checking in Betty and the other Volunteer headed out to a Red Cross Service Center in Waynesboro Mississippi where they spent the day assisting many Hurricane Survivors .. Laurel Mississippi .. the City of Laurel is located in Jones County Mississippi .. Jones County's 2000 census showed a population of 64,958. Laurel is the largest city ( 18,881 ) in Jones County .. Laurel is .. 100 miles from Mississippi's Gulf Coast. 110 miles from Mobile, AL 140 miles from New Orleans, LA 200 miles from Birmingham, AL 340 miles from Atlanta, GA .. the local Newspaper is Laurel Leader-Call .. their Website is www.leadercall.com .. Laurel and the area around Laurel was not hit real hard from when Hurricane KATRENA passed thru .. they had good strong winds and much rain .. for the most part the City will be back to ‘normal’ in a couple of weeks .. the Red Crosse Center in Laurel is providing aid to people in a four County area around Laurel .. 11:00 am - HEADLINES - Bush tours New Orleans devastation Presidential convoy visits city's flooded neighborhoods NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- Two weeks after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast, President Bush on Monday toured the flooded streets of New Orleans -- his first up-close visit of the storm-wracked city. Bush rode in a military truck plowing through neighborhoods plagued by mud and high water. The president and federal, state and local officials have faced criticism for their response to Katrina's aftermath. Bush's four-truck convoy visited areas thick with stench from standing water. 12:00 pm - Ophelia downgraded to tropical storm - Storm idling off the Carolinas WILMINGTON, North Carolina (AP) -- Hurricane Ophelia was downgraded to a tropical storm again Monday as the indecisive weather system moved slowly off the coast, its outer bands of rain not quite reaching land. Despite Ophelia's waxing and waning strength and slow progress, residents' attention had been focused by the devastation caused elsewhere by Hurricane Katrina. 05:00 pm – HEADLINES - Bush gets ground tour of Katrina damage - FEMA director Michael Brown resigns amid criticism CNN) -- President Bush got a firsthand look Monday at two of the areas most damaged by Hurricane Katrina, while the man initially in charge of the federal government's response to the disaster resigned. Michael Brown, under fire over his qualifications and for what critics call a bungled response to Katrina, announced his resignation in Washington as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. "The president appreciates Mike Brown's service," said White House press secretary Scott McClellan, citing Brown's work leading recovery efforts last year after four hurricanes hit Florida. "He was widely praised for FEMA's response and recovery efforts." Asked whether the president had asked for Brown's resignation, McClellan said, "This was Mike Brown's decision, and he respects that decision." Bush later named David Paulison, a 30-year veteran of fire and rescue work, to be acting FEMA director.       September 13th 2005 Fort Myers Florida Centennial Harbour Marina – Fort Myers Florida - 239-461-0775 – Website - www.marina33901.com 09:00 am - HEADLINES - Nursing home owners charged - Thirty-four people died when hurricane hit BATON ROUGE, Louisiana (CNN) -- The attorney for a couple charged with 34 counts of negligent homicide said Tuesday his clients never abandoned the nursing home where people tried to ride out Hurricane Katrina. The Category 4 hurricane swamped St. Rita's Nursing Home in St. Bernard Parish, near New Orleans, killing 34 people August 29. On Tuesday, Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti Jr. charged Mable and Salvador Mangano Sr., both 65, with 34 counts of negligent homicide. Foti said the nursing home's patients should have been moved to a safer place. "They did not die of natural causes; they drowned," Foti told reporters. "Thirty-four people drowned in a nursing home where they should have been evacuated." 05:00 pm – HEADLINES – Ophelia Nears, Islands Empty, Schools Shut WRIGHTSVILLE BEACH, N.C. — Vulnerable islands were evacuated and mainland schools were closed Tuesday as Ophelia strengthened to a hurricane and wobbled closer to land with a threat of flooding rain. The National Hurricane Center upgraded the storm's status Tuesday evening, saying maximum sustained winds had reached 75 mph, with higher gusts. The center said further strengthening was possible. "I don't really want to mess with it," Bruce McIlvaine of Logan Township, N.J., said as he packed to leave the Outer Banks' Hatteras Island before his vacation ended. "You're on a spit of land a dozen miles into the ocean." Others were nonchalant, following the lead of many longtime residents who were staying put. September 14th thru the 19th 2005 Fort Myers Florida Centennial Harbour Marina – Fort Myers Florida - 239-461-0775 – Website - www.marina33901.com .. as Hurricane OPHELIA headed up the East Coast the edge of the Eye just brushed along the Coast Line .. it caused much wind and surf damage .. Betty is continuing with her Red Cross work in Laurel and Waynesboro Mississippi .. the roll of the Red Cross can be described as manning Client Assistance Centers to assist families hurt by Hurricane KATRINA .. and that is just what Betty and the others in her four County area are doing .. the Storm Victims from that part of Mississippi can receive financial assistance to buy gas, clothing and other items .. .. after their first week in Laurel Betty and a few of the other Red Cross Volunteers had their first day off .. they spent the day doing a ‘road trip’ and headed South of Laurel towards the Coast Line where KATRINA first made ‘landfall’ .. they wore their Red Cross Uniforms making it easier to deal with the Security in the area .. their first stop was in the Slidell Louisiana area .. as they approached the area Betty’s first reaction was that it looked much like the Punta Gorda Florida area after Hurricane Charlie made a direct hit in that area .. but as they drove closer to the Gulf Coast line the damage became MUCH greater .. .. the weather here in the Fort Myers area has been affected greatly even by the Hurricanes that have not tracked thru this area .. the waters in Lake Okeechobee that is just up the River from us has been stressed with the high winds .. the winds have caused much of the settlement that has collected on the bottom to now become part of the overall water makeup .. and with the rains the water elevation has gone up and the Corps of Engineers has been busy trying to lower the water back down .. anyway all of the above has caused an abnormal chemistry in our waters in the Fort Myers area .. and it has caused a ‘bloom’ of growth in the waters .. the growth is at the surface of the water and as it is exposed to the warm air temperatures it forms a green slim that STINKS !! .. YUCK !! .. as our tides go up and down the green slim coats everything that it comes in contact with resulting in more STINKING !! .. HEADLINES - Man Rescued After 18 Days in Attic Sunday, September 18, 2005 NEW ORLEANS – AP - Day after day, for more than two weeks, the 76-year-old man sat trapped and alone in his attic, sipping from a dwindling supply of water until it ran out. No food. No way out of a house ringed by foul floodwaters. Without ever leaving home, Gerald Martin (search) lived out one of the most remarkable survival stories of Hurricane Katrina (search). Rescuers who found him Friday, as they searched his neighborhood by boat, were astounded at his good spirits and resiliency after 18 days without food or human contact. "It's an incredible story of survival," said Louie Fernandez, spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (search) search unit that carried out the rescue. In recent days, search crews have been finding corpses by the dozens in the still-flooded neighborhoods of New Orleans (search), but not trapped survivors. The FEMA search-and-rescue boat navigating through the Eighth Ward didn't expect to find anyone alive at 6010 Painters St., but they planned to search the premises of a one-story wood house. As the motor idled and the boat glided forward, they heard a voice. "Hey, over here." An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State An Objectivist Review September 2, 2005 - by Robert Tracinski | The Intellectual Activist Source: TIA Daily -- September 2, 2005 It has taken four long days for state and federal officials to figure out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can't blame them, because it has also taken me four long days to figure out what is going on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if you think that we are confronting a natural disaster. If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild.. Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicles, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists--myself included--did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting. But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster. The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong. The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over the past four days. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view. The man-made disaster is the welfare state. For the past few days, I have found the news from New Orleans to be confusing. People were not behaving as you would expect them to behave in an emergency--indeed, they were not behaving as they have behaved in other emergencies. That is what has shocked so many people: they have been saying that this is not what we expect from America. In fact, it is not even what we expect from a Third World country. When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion. They work together to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously organize to keep order and solve problems. This is especially true in America. We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own initiative rather than waiting around for the government to take care of us. I have seen this a hundred times, in small examples (a small town whose main traffic light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to get out of their cars and serve as impromptu traffic cops, directing cars through the intersection) and large ones (the spontaneous response of New Yorkers to September 11). So what explains the chaos in New Orleans? To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a description from a Washington Times story: "Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists, knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and police and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on. "The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen poured in to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire.... "Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened Arkansas National Guard members were inside New Orleans with shoot-to-kill orders. "'These troops are...under my orders to restore order in the streets,' she said. 'They have M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will.' " The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article shows National Guard troops, with rifles and armored vests, riding on an armored vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a rabble of squalid, listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling at them. It looks exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad. What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for an orgy of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to storm the very buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the drivers to drive away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Super Dome? Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing further destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying to help them? My wife, Sherri, figured it out first, and she figured it out on a sense-of-life level. While watching the coverage last night on Fox News Channel, she told me that she was getting a familiar feeling. She studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Chicago, which is located in the South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in America. "The projects," as they were known, were infamous for uncontrollable crime and irremediable squalor. (They have since, mercifully, been demolished.) What Sherri was getting from last night's television coverage was a whiff of the sense of life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"--the informational phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news channels--gave some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane, and of the 300,000 or so who remained, a large number were from the city's public housing projects. Jack Wakeland then gave me an additional, crucial fact: early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the city's jails--so they just let many of them loose. There is no doubt a significant overlap between these two populations--that is, a large number of people in the jails used to live in the housing projects, and vice versa. There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hit--but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups: criminals--and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep--on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves. All of this is related, incidentally, to the apparent incompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. But in a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political supporters--not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency. No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In fact, some are already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for example, for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans had drafted an adequate evacuation plan. The worst example is an execrable piece from the Toronto Globe and Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos on American "individualism" But the truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos was caused by a system that was the exact opposite of individualism. What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the government hasn't taken care of them. They don't use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men. But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them. The welfare state--and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and encourages--is the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is reporting ... .. now that Hurricane KATRINA is in the ‘Clean Up’ stage we have two more Tropical Storms to deal with .. UFDA !! ..Hurricane OPHELIA is heading mostly due North well east of Florida’s East Coast and it should not be much of a factor for us boaters in the Fort Myers Florida area .. but Tropical Storm is projected to head into the Gulf and who knows after that .. it is expected that by later this afternoon it will become a Hurricane as its winds and strength has been increasing with every update .. 02:00 pm - HEADLINES - KEY WEST, Fla. (AP) -- Residents were ordered evacuated from the lower Florida Keys on Monday as strengthening Tropical Storm Rita headed toward the island chain, threatening to grow into a hurricane with a potential 8-foot storm surge. Although Rita's immediate threat was to Florida, rough projections of its track raised the possibility that the Louisiana coast could be targeted less than a month after Hurricane Katrina devastated the area. Oil prices surged as traders worried about Rita's possible effect on facilities in the Gulf of Mexico. The storm had sustained wind of about 70 mph by early afternoon, up from 60 mph earlier in the day, and could be a Category 1 hurricane, with wind of at least 74 mph, by the end of the day, the National Hurricane Center said. The Keys evacuation covered 40,000 people living from below Marathon to Key West. Visitors were ordered to clear out of the entire length of the low-lying Keys, which are connected by just one highway. Hurricane warnings were posted for the Keys and Miami-Dade County, and the storm's eye was expected to pass near the islands Tuesday morning, the National Hurricane Center said. Voluntary evacuation orders were posted for some 134,000 Miami-Dade residents who live in coastal areas such as Miami Beach and Key Biscayne. Rita is the 17th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, making this the fourth busiest season since record-keeping started in 1851. The record is 21 tropical storms in 1933. Computer models project that it could be in the northwest Gulf of Mexico near Mexico or Texas by the weekend, but people in areas ravaged by Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana were warned it also could veer in their direction. Katrina crossed South Florida into the Gulf last month before it turned northward to Louisiana and Mississippi. "This is something everyone should be paying attention to," said Daniel Brown, a hurricane center meteorologist. The man in charge of removing water from New Orleans and surveying and repairing levees warned that Rita could affect efforts to remove water from the city. "We're watching Tropical Storm Rita's projected path and, depending on its strength and how much rain falls, everything could change. Residents moving into the area may have to evacuate again," Col. Duane Gapinski, commander of the Army Corps of Engineers Task Force Unwatering, said in a statement Monday. If Rita strikes Texas, it could seriously disrupt the oil industry. About half of oil production and 35 percent of gasoline production in the Gulf already are shut down because of damage from Hurricane Katrina, according to the Minerals Management Service. "We really can't afford to lose more production," said Phil Flynn, analyst at Alaron Trading Corp. in Chicago. Key West streets were quiet Monday morning Kelly Friend and two workers boarded up her store and painted a message: "Hey bartender 1 Rita on the rocks to go!" "Not that we're afraid of the hurricane, but we want to protect our investment," Friend said. "Plus it gives us an excuse to take a day off and drink." The Defense Department's Northern Command sent defense coordinating officers to Florida and designated Homestead Air Force Base as a mobilization center. Military liaison officers were sent to FEMA headquarters in Atlanta and to a state emergency operations center in Tallahassee. Six to 15 inches of rain was possible in the Keys, with 3 to 5 inches possible across southern Florida. A storm surge rising 6 to 8 feet above normal tide levels was predicted for the Keys. Rita passed the Bahamas' southern islands during the night, but residents said the storm's outer bands didn't appear severe. At 2 p.m. EDT, Rita was centered about 165 miles southeast of Nassau, Bahamas, or about 380 miles east-southeast of Key West. It had picked up speed and was moving to the west-northwest at about 14 mph, according to the hurricane center. Four hurricanes struck Florida last year, killing dozens of people and causing $19 billion in insured losses. Hurricane Dennis brushed by the Keys in July before slamming the Florida Panhandle. Farther out in the Atlantic, Hurricane Philippe formed late Sunday well east of the Lesser Antilles. At 11 a.m., Philippe had maximum sustained wind near 75 mph, and was centered about 365 miles east of the Leeward Islands. It was moving to the north near 7 mph. 05:00 pm – HEADLINES - Mayor halts return to New Orleans Nagin cites concern over Tropical Storm Rita NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- Mayor Ray Nagin halted New Orleans residents' return to the city Monday, citing the threat from the strengthening Tropical Storm Rita. Nagin said his city's levees and flood walls were weakened by the August 29 impact of Category 4 Hurricane Katrina, which left many neighborhoods on the eastern side of the Mississippi River under water. Nagin said one projection he had been shown had Rita becoming a Category 3 hurricane, hitting Louisiana and passing near New Orleans toward the end of the week. Another projection, he said, had the storm possibly hitting Galveston, Texas .. September 20th 2005 Fort Myers Florida Centennial Harbour Marina – Fort Myers Florida - 239-461-0775 – Website - www.marina33901.com .. with RITA heading towards the Keys I am concluding this Hurricane Log .. ‘Click’ on the ‘RITA’ link to the left to continue with our 2005 Hurricane Season .. any updates on Betty’s deployment will also be in the next Log ..