Hurricane Katrina: A Huge Federal Failure
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- Опубліковано 13 лип 2024
- A natural disaster, or government lackluster?
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The morning after Katrina hit, my best friend watched the news in disbelief. He and I immediately started throwing gear in our trucks, I hitched up my 25’ boat. We were loaded down with chainsaws, chains, axes, everything we could think of. Knowing fuel would be impossible to find, we filled two 55 gallon barrels with gas for the trucks and the boat.
We headed off and soon we’re in a convoy of likeminded folks.
In Opelousas Louisiana were stopped and told to turn around, that we weren’t needed, everything was under control. There were understandably no hotel rooms available for hundreds of miles from N.O. so we slept that night in our trucks. The next morning we watched the news in a restaurant.
It was not under control, far from it, only getting worse. By this time all roads were closed to inbound traffic. We pleaded with Louisiana troopers to please let us pass, that we had chainsaws to cut open the roofs, and a proper boat to gets us there.
No, turnaround. If we had just go on when the first Trooper had told us that everything was under control, maybe we could have helped, maybe not. All I knew for a fact was that there were about fifty trucks, in just our little convoy, all pulling boats, as ready as we could be to do whatever we could do to help, and we were literally blocked by Louisiana State Troopers.
This is exactly why I do not trust government and protect the second amendment.
It would have been better optics if news spread of 50 civilian trucks coming in to help.
Too bad that can't happen today because pf the BS Identity politics. Seeing that you look white, you'll likely be attacked if you held that chainsaw.
God bless you and everyone in that convoy.
You are a good man.
You also may have been shot.
Why did you let some asshole in a suit stop you?
I swear, it’s like they wanted the city to drown. Never seen such a bad case of doing everything to make a situation worse.
I remember after Katrina hit watching the news reports with my Dad, who was still active in local-level emergency management. I thought he was going to throw things at the TV when we saw the lot of half-submerged school busses that could have evacuated so many people if they'd been mobilized. He ripped the local and state level failures far more than the federal, since his training had stressed that communities have to assume they'll be on their own for 72 hours before any federal help gets through. To my mind (and his) the biggest federal failing wasn't being "late to the scene" - that's expected - but all the bureaucratic roadblocks they put in the way of volunteer help (finding out about the volunteers kept from helping until they'd gone through FEMA's "sensitivity training" almost gave him a coronary). Made me understand why C.S. Lewis had said when he wrote the Screwtape Letters, he thought of the demonic ranks as being a bureaucracy.
My mother and I wanted to go help. We were planning to fill her truck with bottled water and feminine supplies, and driving over from Georgia.
We were told by both FEMA and the Red Cross that they didn't need more volunteers, that we couldn't volunteer until we took their classes, and that we should NOT go there without a "sponsor" and "proper training". I was told in no uncertain terms that we "would just be in the way".
We both regret not ignoring them and going anyway.
@@nobody8328 a good friend of mine was s member of our states Disaster Response Team. They drove their trucks nonstop 30 hours to the Louisiana border where they had to wait for official permission to enter the state. They waited. And waited. While the team commander spent hours on the phone desperately trying to get someone anyone to give them the OK. After three days the whole team was ordered back home.
Yes, extremely frustrating situation😨
Was there.... Our unit was the first boots on ground. Tell your old man to chill bout the buses, they were write offs and inoperable. I can say as both a mechanic and someone who was there, when you flood an engine, it'll just break rods / shatter pistons when it hydro-locks because of a cylinder or two being full of water. That is if you can get the engine to turn over in the first place.
Just because you can see the top half of the bus sitting in the sunshine on the 7:00 news DOESN'T mean the engine wasn't submerged in the storm. Half the seabee equipment that was there I had to fix before we could use it. I didn't have stuff like fuel and oil filters for a renault, but yeah, I could bring a flooded M998 back to life.
@@nunyabidness674 see, that's the problem. Those busses shouldn't have been there to get flooded.
They should have used those to evacuate people who couldn't get out on their own, except that no one cared.
My family lost everything in Katrina. We resettled in Shreveport and Mansfield in October. I almost died from no insulin 2 times within the first week. It was absolutely horrible.. people died in the heat..outside clinics. Bodies floated in the water for days. I have so many stories from that time and will never trust or rely the government again. As a survivor and seeing the stuff I witnessed at 17 years old.. I attempted suicide that October.. I struggle with ptsd.
Thank you Simon for talking about this. It feels like no one remembers what happened to us. The poor were treated like 2nd class citizens.. the dead deprived of basic human dignity. Iwon't go into details now but I believe people have a right to know what truly happened down there.
I’m so sorry, I had no idea, I knew about the hurricane 🌀 and that people where in the dome but I had no idea it was such a shitshow. Love 💕 from Australia 🇦🇺
We remember, and it's still talked about. The Media just doesn't want attention shifted from the virus. Rise Against has a song Help Is On The Way that talks about Katrina, and the music video for it makes me cry because as a 6th grader in Northern Illinois what could I have done in that moment? I'm glad you're still with us friend.
I'm so sorry. I remember very well. I'm so glad you're still with us. 💙💙💙
It is something to be noted this kind of trauma.
People wanting to commit suicide after living through hell.
It’s not noted enough.
I'm sorry. As a 10 year old kid i had no idea what i was watching on tv. I'm so sorry
The "cajun navy" isn't talked about much. It was a fleet of civilian boats from the local areas who banded together to save survivors but was turned away from the city, because of the reports of violence. It was painful hearing about 100s of boats being barred from entering the city to save survivors
It should be noted that the reports of violence were almost entirely made up to cover for the fact that government forces simply didn't know what the situation was for much of the city.
Most of the "criminality" was people salvaging supplies from ruined stores or just racist/classist fantasies.
The cajun Navy helped us here in Houston during Harvey 🙌🏽🙏🏽
@@thomaswillard6267 they absolutely did and worked with a lot of Texas locals to help so many
@@thomaswillard6267 this is an absolute made up narrative by leftists to blame other parties for a specific group of people that committed horrendous atrocities during the chaos. The violence after Katrina was barbaric on a whole new level. I know because I was 14 when it happened and watched the chaos unfold live on TV with my family in our living room.
We watched police stealing Cadillacs, gang members firing into a maternity ward, people looting beer and TVs, brutality and sex crimes on innocent people, straight up murder, the National Guard being ordered to not enter a specific part of NOLA because it was being run by armed gangs, armed gang members fleeing to nearby towns and being forced away at gunpoint and so on.
The media simply showed pictures of what was happening, and instead of being appalled and reporting the truth, they began conjuring up the "Das raysist!" narrative in order to excuse looters who were on live television walking away with electronics and booze, but maybe you think electronics and booze are essentials, so who knows.
People like you are why I'm glad I got to witness some things as they were unfolding, instead of being born years later and brainwashed by a complete destruction of history. It makes me wonder what else leftists are lying about.
A volunteer with the cajun navy helped my father in law during hurricane Laura when he wasn't able to evacuate in time by getting to his home and bringing him supplies like fresh water, and then calling us to let us know he was safe and his house was still standing and structurally sound, just didn't have electricity. I'm still so grateful because it was during one of the hottest months of the year, if he'd been without water for too long I have no doubt he would've needed to be hospitalized for dehydration, or worse, and we were too far away to make it before the hurricane hit to get him out.
That quote from Governor Blanco sickens me, comparing American citizens in an emergency to insurgents in a war zone. As a soldier who served during this period it makes my stomach turn that she believed soldiers should be used as anything other than assistance during an emergency
Thats one way to tell a traitor from a patriot. Listen to how they talk about their constituents. You don't make that kind of comment as a government official unless your stabbing your constituents in the back behind the scenes.
Louisiana politician for ya. John Bel Edwards is just as bad as she was.
I went there after the storm to help throughmy work, the area we were in definitely needed armed patrols bc of the insane amount of violence (literal roaming gangs robbing anyone they came across/looting/other really bad things) coming from the local criminal elements. There was a lot of people who were in need of help, and a lot who weren't
This was a WROL scenario. Simon didnt go into much detail but law enforcement was fired upon and out gunned by the roaming gangs that remained. I believe that the rescue helicopters were also fired at. Lots of looting happened after also.
@@oliverwells8011 That should be a neighborhood watch/volunteer militia issue though. National guard should have been focused on rescue, medical, evacuation, and logistical supply issues
This tragedy was one of the key events that encouraged me to change my career. I was working in commercial Supply Chain in Ireland and EU and was appalled looking on from afar at the delays in support arriving. Took me a few years but I transititioned over to the humanitarian & emergency response and after a long and winding road I'm now working on a project in north east Syria.
While I was in Ireland this event had a profound affect on me. One that I shall never forget.
You are an angel. Most people don't realize how mentally hard it is to work in emergency and disaster management. You see people at their very worst moment in their lives and you also see the incompetence of many leaders.
Good on you mate.
Wow man! Good luck with your project in Syria!!
Good for you Will
What a legend!
Good onya mate, I wish you all the best :)
the fact that they BLOCKED people coming to help pisses me off more than any of the things they didn't do
It doesn't matter if someone is "willing" to help when they can't actually effect any real assistance.
@stevenschnepp576 all these years later, we know people could have gone in to the submerged areas to help people. You know that, too
@@stevenschnepp576they can. After big cyclones here in Australia, the whole community comes out to help fix the damage or help those less fortunate, sharing food, providing shelter and helping people find a new place to live. That state government in Louisiana and FEMA are downright despicable for how they handled this.
It’s not the only time it’s happened as well, police blocked people from evacuating the Lahaina fire last august
It’s just so absurd: people tryna help, and they are preventing the help. Like whaaat?
I always say this when we're talking about Katrina. In 1948 the US fed a city half a world away by air for 11 months. In 2005 they couldn't manage to feed one of their own for weeks.
As a younger US citizen it boggles my kind how laughably bad we handle so many environmental/political/economic disaster. We have so many resources and massive amounts of manpower but absolutely zero intelligence or common sense.
Well thank you Simon and the team for delivering this.
Oh the problem is a LOT worse than simple stupidity. True evil exists and soon the public at large will know it.
FEMA, like most government agencies, is not there to help you, it's there to help itself and the politicians who created and fund it. The CDC does not protect you from Covid, it protects itself from bad publicity. Department of Homeland Security's goal is not to protect the country, it's to enlarge its size and budget while protecting politicians from you.
If you study history, you'll notice that many famines and humanitarian disasters are caused not by actual shortages of food and other supplies, but by gross mismanagement. Katrina was the acute problem, but the disaster was caused by incompetence and bureaucracy.
Sure are good at spending trillions to murder innocent farmers in the middle east
@@RCAvhstape couldn't have said it better myself. The state of our covid testing is a pretty good indicator of how much they care. I had to wait in line 6 hours to get a test, and then more importantly 4 days to get the result back. I mean come on the government has had 2 years to get their shit together. Side note, sticking that swab up there felt fucking weird, felt like I tickled the underside of my brain lol
As an American, i can say with confidence if there's one thing our government can't do, it's anything correctly.
You're tied with the British government.
They first provoked Brexit, thereafter theatrically failed in implementing border controls. I don't know if it's still the case, but months after Brexit - which happened 5 years after the vote - you could still bring goods into the country without paying import tariffs.
Yup. Leave it to the states or privatize it.
Yes. You'd think you'd actually start caring about the poor and the sick. Bah! They can't make us MONEY!!!!!!
Tbh the Louisiana state government and city of New Orleans made everything worse. The federal response would’ve been better if they had been working with a non corrupt local and state government.
Yeah, you Americans surely know how to elect your governments. >.
Tragedy could have been avoided. Prior to Katrina, the Army Corps of Engineers recommended fortifying the levies since the 1970's, but New Orleans decided to spend the allocated funding on tourism instead. They did this every time the review was conducted. Also, it didn't help that the Louisiana Governor refused Federal assistance and military resources 3 days prior to landfall.
There's people in Louisiana who said before the dam break they heard what sounds like an explosion as if someone sets explosive to the dam, i don't know how true this is but it's well talk on the ground in Louisiana
@@moneypromusic4419 The 'explosion' sound was the dam bursting from the pressure of all the water.
@@moneypromusic4419 so the normal sound of a large dam like structure catastrophicly failing.
Yeah I knew a guy from New Orleans who told me the government there was and still is corrupt as all hell. They were doomed from the start!
@@moneypromusic4419 what do you think a collapsing dam sounds like? There's actual video of this process with other dams. I can see how someone dumb would think it's explosives.
I lost everything in katrina. We were homeless. It was terrible. We weren’t even allowed back in to the city to see our home until almost a month after the flood, because they had to go from house to house to check for bodies first. Definitely leaves an impact on you as a kid that material possessions don’t matter. It can all be replaced. The only things that can’t though are photos. My mom stopped taking photos for pretty much the rest of my childhood because she was still upset from having lost them all in the flood. She felt like it was pointless. That day completely changed the course of my life.
I'm also a Katrina survivor, and I was ready to rip this video apart, like so many others, but BRAVO!
Same here adam
Something people hardly ever mention, although it's hard to mention all of the tragedy fully in any one piece on Katrina, is the inmates. The Corrections Officers just up and fled, leaving the incarcerated people locked in cells that quickly flooded. They were left there for a long time, no food, water, sewerage, medical, electricity... They tell stories of bodies floating past their cells. We don't know how many incarcerated people died as a result as it's been covered up. They could have evacuated the people in those prisons and jails easily and safely. They were truly vulnerable and could not fend for themselves in any capacity.
This incident demonstrates how people in power can become in a disastrous situation, not caring about anything or anyone but themselves.
The Canadian military had aid ships in harbour through our D.A.R.T program before the US had troops in the city. It's unthinkable that they couldn't respond to an emergency at home
*Cough* Texas power outages *cough*
The residents of St. Bernard Parish still remember the Canadians being the first outside aid, and thank y'all for being fast and competent.
Couldn't? Or maybe the people in charge didn't want to....
@@killman369547 Little of column A, little of column B. Couldn't due to sheer ineptitude. Didn't want to spend money on a strong emergency response system, which lead directly to the couldn't.
The people of south Louisiana remember all the help Canada and her people did for us. Some of us even became Canadian citizens afterwards. It wasnt just the aid and resources from Canada that people remember either. A lot of families in Canada offered their homes to the victims. The government offered to take us in too.
I will never forget that kindness.
Live in New Orleans. You can still see the neglect TODAY… Katrina was in 2005. The lower 9th is mostly deserted since the Road Home compensated home value rather than building costs. Many in lower 9th and elsewhere couldn’t afford to come back since their repair costs were more than the home value FEMA was willing to pay. Homes with greater value were able to rebuild. The government doesn’t protect you, Katrina is proof of that to anyone unlucky enough to have found themselves there. RIP to those lost, you are not forgotten❤
9th wards, the crime rate went way down after atlest
I remember my parents watching the news when this happened and hearing the anchors basically call the victims animals and say they deserved what they got for not leaving. How cruel can you possibly be?
Proof?
There is none because that didn't happen.
I can understand a certain level of scorn for well prepared citizens given every option to leave who stayed
However, the city gave them no options, they left the poor and lower middle class to die and then blamed them for not being prepared enough
@@blakel8121 OooK Illuminati
There's a guardian article from a few years back by Tom McCarthy talking about how Brian Williams exaggerated the level of violence in order to try and make a bigger story out of it
I was in the gulf coast of Florida when the eye of hurricane Michael plowed us down. We lost all contact with the outside world and waited for help to come to no avail. We only had a small radio and listened for days about our surrounding areas got help and none were sent our way. When we finally got help we were told that they thought we were all lost....by the time we got help we had already started helping each other and clearing roads when we could. With all this being said I would rather go through that Cat 5 then to go through what people did with Katrina. What happened in Louisiana after Katrina was atrocious.
Mississippi got it just as bad as Louisiana. The coast looked like an atom bomb went off. But we recovered faster.
Yes you guys did and my heart goes out to everyone that has had a catastrophic incident happen to them regardless to what part of the world they are in. I know the long term effects of PTSD that I now live with due to hurricane Micheal and I don't wish it on anyone. I am incredibly grateful for my community because we just all started pulling together and started freeing anyone we could while waiting for help to arrive and immediately started checking on our older and or handicapped individuals. Sometimes it's good to belong to a small somewhat close community.
@@geovonnie69Yup, it was tore up alright! Just insane. Idk seemed like it took a very long time for recovery there too. All the rebuilding.
@@sherriammons5540 I saw storm chaser video of it. Unimaginable how bad it is. Storms that strong break everything.
@@jc.1191 We are still rebuilding. That storm literally left most of our trees looking like broken Large toothpicks and you can still see the destruction if you fly over us.
I stayed in New Orleans during Katrina as my parents/family believed it was going to be another false alarm as hurricane Ivan was in 2004. We stayed in one of the high rise buildings right outside downtown, because my brother was lead engineer at the building and he was required to stay. Everything was ok until one of the 1200 windows broke which caused the pressure in the building to equalize causing the other windows to break much easier. We hid in the center stairwell for about 4 hours. We lost water pressure and the generators only powered emergency lighting and we had no water pressure at all. We stayed in there watching the fires burn in the distance and the waters rise. About 2.5 days later the national guard came in and told us we had to split because they needed to use the parking garage as a helipad and commandeer the diesel from the generators since all the gas station tanks were flooded in the city. It was definitely an experience you’ll never forget.
New Orleans ignoring Army Corps of Engineers recommendations to improve their levies caused Katrina to happen, but FEMA made it much, much worse than it should have been. FEMA has shown repeatedly that when there are no consequences for failure you get more failure in the future.
I was 9 when Katrina hit. My parents ,who were very patriotic, were outraged that this country, out of any other, would be so bumbling and neglectful.
I have so many stories from Katrina. You can't know how bad it was unless you were there. These videos come close but they can't portray the smells or the fear that everyone was feeling. Of all my active duty time with the u.s. army, the one time I wouldn't willingly relive is New Orleans; Baghdad and Kuwait sucked but I would go go back in a heart beat to avoid Louisiana.
I know a guy who worked a security detail around the French quarter.. lets just say 17 yrs later ----he periodically seeks therapy
Because of these chains of failures many people in the region (Southern LA & Southern-Central MS) now do not trust government emergency response at all and have taken emergency preparedness into their own hands. Many people I know here stock up on ample food, water, medical supplies, etc. Before hurricanes and many in New Orleans take no chances and leave like they did during Ida.
I'm an Amateur Radio operator and our Mississippi to Louisiana emergency nets are tightly interlinked and practiced regularly as amateur radio can get the word out (like it did with the levee failures and people stuck on roofs) well before Emergency Services get word of what happened.
It was ham radio operators who told our extended family we were alive because my grandpa has a ham license. Crazy important passion
That's the way it should be.
This is why we must protect our second amendment.
You already do not trust the government in an emergency situation, why should you also let the government tell you whether you should have a means of defending your family.
And with the failure of the Covid response. People globally do not trust the government now.
It's almost like they should have done this in the first place instead of waiting on someone else to do it for them.
I couldn’t imagine what it would be like living through that, and watching EVERY LEVEL OF GOVERNMENT utterly fail you. Especially the Mayor of New Orleans and FEMA.
My family lost everything during Katrina. Most of us are still suffering from PTSD. I remember us all being stuck on a bridge for 16 hours while trying to evacuate. We were caught in storms that landed ahead of the hurricane. A caravan of 5 vehicles containing everyone I loved. I thought we would all die there. And the way we were treated afterwards was a slap in the face.
Even without mentioning how every news story for a year afterward was about how Katrina refugees "were responsible" for the uptick in crime all over the US. Living in San Antonio and working in New Orleans after Katrina, I'll never forget the stories I've heard, things I've seen, and people I've met. And I'm not even a victim of this staggering tragedy.
It's baffling to me that even with TRUE verifiable accounts of incompetence like this, that the majority of people still believe the government has the best interest of the individual person in mind. Every family should have plans and to the best of their ability the supplies needed to take care of themselves! The Sad fact is that most people won't learn this lesson until it's too late.
I was at Fort Campbell KY when Katrina went down. The NEXT DAY, we were sent to Iraq. We were fully prepared to help & two states away. I spent that time helplessly watching from a DFAC TV in FOB Spheichter. Fully prepared to help & save my countrymen & sent somewhere that the locals wanted to kill us.
Bush/Cheney 2004; “A Safer World and a More Hopeful America”
Well that's a bullshit lie from the outset from anyone that's ever been in the military.
Katrina was hell on earth. A hell that was so traumatic on all of us even in Texas, where, in Houston, we received bus load after yellow school bus load of Katrina survivors, that we incorporated into our cities and I loved watching the blending of multiple cultures I've loved for so long. Unfortunately, "we" (including many of those same survivors) died on long, packed highways just years later, desperate to avoid a similar fate. We watched in horror at what happened during Katrina, unable to believe what was happening, unable to learn if our loved ones had reached safety or not. We no longer wait on the government to handle flooding crises; we have our own caravans of volunteers that activate, wherever they are needed.
I remember a story a guy was telling about how he and other people were with the elderly stuck with low supplies. No one wanted to leave the elderly so every day a few fit people would spend hours trying to wave help with no success. Then one elderly white man told the man to take him up to the roof to look for help. They didnt want to bc the elderly man was in a wheelchair and pretty frail but after some back and forth they took the wheelchair bound man to the roof.
A few hours later helicopters arrived. When the younger man asked how the older man knew theyd get help the elder man said somethint along the lines of "Im white and old. You and the others are black."
That really stuck with me.
The mortuary in Louisiana were filled with dead black people with a lot of organs missing according to morticians who work in the morg
@@moneypromusic4419 😬👀
It's not because he was white, it's because he was elderly and crippled and it'd make an already horrible situation look even worse if camera crews found a man face down with his wheelchair nearby.
@@Sonamyfan875 there's more to the story but it included the younger black men building an sos signal and actively flagging down rescue efforts for days with only one boat stopping to see what was happening but still leaving them. It wasn't until the elder white man went up to the roof with the black man that they were rescued within hours. Considering what was happening to the POC and lower boroughs at the time, I'm more incline to believe that racism did effect their rescue efforts.
As someone who lived through Katrina as an adult, I must say that you really don't know what you're talking about. My father was a state representative at the time. I was able to listen in to the briefings from Governor Blanco to state elected officials throughout the storm and the recovery.
Governor Blanco had no idea what she was doing. 12 hours after the storm hit she said in her briefing that FEMA asked if we (Louisiana) needs any help. She said she told them we're doing pretty good and that we don't need help at this time. The levees broke the next day and she got on TV, crying, sobbing "why will no one help us?
She prevented the Feds from coming in when they were ready to help. She turned it into a political fight.
Thank you! I assume everyone knows Gov Blanco’s role in this, but they don’t. Thank you for summarizing so neatly.
The levees broke the same day Katrina hit. I was a EMT working the super dome before during and after Katrina hit and by the afternoon people were coming in saying the city was flooding and they started setting us up on the interstate before dark.
@@melissajohnson2935 the levees didn't break until after. The flooding that occurred at that point was due to the generators for the pumps being located on the ground and shorting out as soon as the water from the torrential rain hit them. It is well documented that the 17th Street canal levee didn't break until after the storm had passed.
Blanco was definitely, but we can’t forgot about mayor cueball! He also played a role in the shot show!
@@beck2752 Wasn't it his call to leave the buses where they'd be flooded, and to not use the incoming lanes of traffic for evacuation until it was too late?
I remember seeing videos of people stuck on the bridges. There was a woman who gave birth on one of them. I always wondered if she and her baby made it out alive. New Orleans, you have not been forgotten.
There's something about the way Simon got up and left at the end of the video.. I think even he was taken aback by how poorly this situation was handled.
As someone who lives in New Zealand and was only 10 years old at the time. See this shocked me completely. How the government at all levels failed in this just disgusts me. I can't believe how many people died I didn't even realize how bad this was. The government failed the people completely and they try to blame someone else it just disgusts me. These people should be locked up
Political corruption.
Local politicians wanted to pocket cash rather than spend it on upkeep. They also went out of their way to not use assets they had, like local school buses and the incoming lanes of the highways, which would have made evacuation go much better.
They also wanted to score political points because the President was of the opposing party, so they delayed declaring a state of emergency despite the White House requesting that they do so in order to mobilize FEMA.
I still remember Bush praising the response at that time, even saying ‘Heckuva Job, Brownie!’
I was home sick and watching CNN that week. I remember Brown saying, on live TV, that he didn't know of the superdome. O'Brian actually said are you kidding me. I was gobsmacked he said that.
He was strictly a political appointee with absolutely no experience in any kind of logistics, rescue and search, etc. A true disaster of a person. He never owned up to his incompetence. I briefly touch on this topic on my New Orleans episode on my channel.
He did talk about it and how the whole thing was a disaster
You can't talk to someone from Louisiana about fema without them getting angry. I'm from Baton Rouge, and I'm lucky we weren't on the coast. I know so many people who lost everything
Was at UNO for Katrina. From the West Bank of NOLA.
Fuuuuuuuuuuck FEMA.
The amount of incompetence, negligence, and blatant evil involved in this is legitimately incredible.
Saddly, years later, when hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico (American territory) the response was just as flawed causing help not to arrive swiftly to those who needed it the most. Their people did what they could to help each other out while water and supplies were stock pile by the governement but not distributed around the island.
I was a victim of Katrina
8 years old in New Orleans and i still remember the water vividly
One of the most scariest moments of my life
Let us not forget the failure of the Governor of Louisiana and the Mayor of New Orleans. Fema is a post disaster agency. It is the duty of the State and local governments to be the first response. Let us remember all those school buses that sat empy.
Can't do that, it doesn't jive with the narrative that the Republicans are the incompetent, evil ones.
I was a teenager when this happened. It's good to have the opportunity to examine what went wrong in hindsight, during those days the news was crazy and nobody really had the full story.
Thank you for covering this; I was on the Mississippi Gulf Coast for Katrina. I had family members (in secure areas!) have to swim out of their houses. We received such love and support from the rest of the country and the world with a massive influx of both supplies and volunteers who came to rebuild. We didn't have much, lacking power, plumbing, and an effective government... but we had each other.
That's what happens if you run a country like you run a max-profit company
It's mind blowing how bad they handled it. I remember the feeling of great disaster even up in NY, was kind of how it felt during 9/11...
The death count was comparable.
Wal-Mart did more to help with Katerina than the government did
Good coverage of the issue. i noted one major miss. during the process, insurance companies were awarded compensation for losses while giving them freedom to not compensate home and business owners. all this was done by the bush administration.
Oh yes!! The entire "If water comes down, we pay, if it comes up, we don't" mantra bankrupt many citizens.
every comment I read this disaster gets worse and worse!
The law is the law and insurance is a business based on contract, not a charity. If you start forcing insurance companies to pay for things they did not agree to cover they will go out of business. As it stands now flood insurance is provided only by the federal government; no private insurance companies offer it.
It was also the highly corrupt local governments. Mississippi wasn't too bad it was mostly Louisiana. It took about 5 years but we pretty much fully recovered and improved. Louisiana still hasn't recovered in some places nearly 16 years later.
Pretty sure those laws existed before the Bush Administration, but okay. Sure.
Rest in peace to those that passed away.
I appreciate that you talked about how bad this was handled at all levels. Most people place all the blame on the federal government but local officials absolutely made everything 100 times worse.
I owned a small construction company at the time and me and 2 crews went to help rebuild, spending just under 2 months in several communities in southern louisianna. We left after experiencing almost zero local help. By local, I mean none of the people living in the communities we were building bothered helping to rebuild their own community. And it was not because there were no locals. We saw them every day, even had many watching us labor all day while they sat in their yard or on their porches and some occasionally would ask how soon we would get to their home. We had signs up offering to hire locals and I would pay them. Only 2 guys ever inquired, both said they were interested but neither showed up to work. I have helped with numerous other community rebuilds and from my experience the single difference after katrina was the local involvement.
Love your videos Simon. Are you also going to cover the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami at some point? Katrina was terrible but that one was beyond horrific.
Especially since it slowed down Earths rotation apparently
Even Blackwater (yes, THAT Blackwater) ended up helping evac people stranded by Katrina. Think about how bad it has to be for mercenaries to help people out of the kindness of their hearts.
Mercenaries get a bad rap. I did a little contracting after I left the military, and ended up doing the exact same things I did in the military, just more efficiently, at lower cost, more safely, and for better pay. Never even had to fire a shot in anger.
@@joshm3484 there are rotten ones among and that ruins the reputation of the entirety as a whole...
Reminds of the Yakuza after WW2.
@@MrBlackrapier Depends on who hired you and how much they want you to behave.
And who they are willing to accept contracts from.
@@joshm3484 the thing is they work for money and morality is irrelevant.
I was about 7 when Katrina happened. I live in the north of the State in Shreveport. I had family from New Orleans come to stay with us for 2 months and the 6 big casino/hotels in town were all full with thousands of refugees. We donated food and clothes as best we could. My dad worked construction in Waveland MS building a casino and after the hurricane he told me how bad things were and and things he saw and it messed him up for a long time.
Also my long time GF is from New Orleans and they had to stay because multiple relatives had medical problems and they couldn’t leave and there’s a picture of her getting rescued by a helicopter crew. It’s really sad and eerie even hearing the word Katrina-even if it’s a person’s name that just doesn’t go away.
i was born 2 years after katrina but my parents and older sister lived there at the time, my sister was almost 2 years old. we lost everything. our house flooded, all our belongings were ruined. they were lucky they evacuated early and were never separated. we were lucky that we had family in other parts of the state just close enough to help them get back on their feet. we had lost almost everything we had, and we were the lucky ones. a few years ago we took a vacation to new orleans and we saw the house, was repaired and under different ownership, but it was a bit cathartic to see the home i might've grown up in if things had been different. i don't know much about it cause my parents don't really like talking about it and my sister was too young to remember it
During 2005 I would been 6/7 years old and this is the first I am hearing about the failure of relief as a US citizen
Someone I know went down after as part of the National Disaster Medical Service, to help medically. He went looking with soldiers and another team member to try and find survivors and search houses. He still refuses to talk about what he saw.
A family friend went there to help with construction expertise. He's only spoken about one thing, keeping the rest hidden to this day. What he spoke of was the insane and disturbing amount of dead babies he saw all over the place. They'd simply been left in houses, hospitals and cars to rot in the brutal Louisiana heat. He even came up on a car nonchalantly and saw it face-to-face and it definitely didn't help his drug addiction when he got back home to Atlanta.
Now think about that. What can be worse than seeing dozens and dozens of dead babies? Whatever else he saw and hasn't spoken of must be the things of nightmares.
My parents and I lived in St. Bernard Parish when Katrina hit. I was 10 at the time. It was the first hurricane my stepmom ever evacuated for. It took us over 10 hours to drive to Lafayette (140 miles). Our 1 story house sat with 8ft of water in it for days. We lost everything. I will never forget walking into my aunt's kitchen and seeing all the adults crowded around the computer. I saw an article with a picture of the Superdome surrounded by water before they could shoo me away. I knew then we weren't going home.
The one loss that affects me now more than ever is my childhood medical records. I'm dealing with health issues now that my doctors could benefit from specific details of my medical history.
But on the bright side, I met this sweet, dorky guy with the most amazing blue eyes in middle school. We dated briefly in high school, lost touch when I moved out of state, and then reconnected when I was in college and he was stationed overseas. We celebrate our 8th anniversary this year with 2 wonderful kiddos. My family and I lost a lot due to Katrina, but I would've never met my husband had it not happened.
The company that my Dad started and that I now work for came about as a direct side effect of the abismal failure of Katrina’s disaster response. We are proud to say we have never not achieved 100% assessment and accountability for all effected persons in the geographical area of a natural disaster within 72hours and 95% within 24hours.
South, MS. I was 11 when it happened. Was forced to stay by my grandmother in saucier, about 5 minutes from D'iberville, so we were extremely close to the coast. I remember the wind and standing directly under the eye which was the calmest moment as the hurricane passed. There were 20 of us packed in a 3 bedroom house. All the adults watching cable news on a tiny turn nob black n white tv with a 6 inch screen. Lost power and had to use this old red radio flashlight. We were without power for 3 weeks, almost a month, this included water as well. We lived off of canned goods, mainly spam and vienne. On the second week everyone that stayed ventured home or to the coast. I remember adults siphoning gas from the vehicles parked in the yard.
When power and cable finally came back, radio didn't do the damage any justice. The entire coast from pascagoula to bay st louis was gone all the northward to the first sets of bridges connecting more of the coastal mainland. There were entire casinos that were moved miles from where they were built. Not a house left stood. As we continued watching the news wondering when people were coming to help or the communities starting cleanup, prior of which the last message we got before power outage was the levies in NOLA broke so we knew they were gonna be done in over there, Bush sounded the alarms for national emergency for the state of Louisianna. No word on Mississippi. National news broadcasts referring to my state as landmass between NOLA and BAMA. No coverage of the coastline other than local coverage, no emergency status, no help coming. I remember the adults were pissed, and I got my first taste of what it would be like for Mississipians the rest of my life. Backwashed and forgotten. The communities got together and started the cleanup. Mid October national help finally arrived.
Katrina was my 9/11. I'll never forget it, i'll always be furious about the response Mississippi got. The entire coastline of my state was gone, ash and dust. And no one cared.
I’m so sorry. Take heart that we regular Americans did care. Most of us are still angry. I just wish we’d been close enough to help.
You are so right! I’m from the Mississippi gulf coast as well and vividly remember what it felt like to be forgotten during that time! We still feel the effects til this day! Katrina changed my life forever and the trauma from that era is still unbelievable!
I remember being a 10 year old watching the footage of Katrina on the news for weeks on end in South Africa. It has always stuck with me, but listening to you explaining everything that happened behind the scenes and understanding the full extent of what a disaster human incompetence caused absolutely horrifies me. As a kid I was scared of the big hurricane killing all the people, but as an adult I now understand it was the disgraceful acts of the people in power who were the real monsters. I'm sitting here with tears in my eyes because so many innocent lives could have been saved.
I was just a child during this, but recently a coworker of mine told me a little bit of her time volunteering to help with the abandoned and lost pets due to Katrina. She was able to volunteer due to her status within the organized animal humane societies. I could tell that she was only giving me a narrow slice of what actually it was like, since it seemed like talking about it was painful even so many years later. I am thankful for this insight to a time that I didn't really understand, because I wanted to know more but didn't want to ask my coworker to recount further.
The words "Federal" and "failure" go hand in hand
Your congressmen and senators thank you for never bothering to send them any letters. Lawmakers take the written word seriously (not as seriously as corporate donations, but it was just a year or two one Senator tried to AT LEAST put a cap on that... it failed of course. Not that you care or see the ironic connection).
Holy shit, this should have been on the Casual Criminalist.
Yes I kept thinking about all those "leaders" that should have been criminally held responsible.
The Coast Guard did a amazing job and should get recognized for their service .
As much slack as the Coast Guard gets from the other branches, there is no denying that they do a lot for the Gulf and Great Lakes.
After Katrina, the govt bussed 10,000 people to my city in Arkansas. I volunteered to help deliver cases of water to them at Fort Chaffee. These people lost everything. It felt third world at Chaffee that day. They had been given a couple of hundred dollars on Walmart gift cards, and people were attacking others for them. They swarmed us to get the water we brought. People just started grabbing the 24 packs of bottled water as we tried to hand them out. These were desperate people. It was very sad.
This was also the first time since WW2 that Mexican troops were deployed outside our own country, and the first time in Mexican history that Federal troops entered the US. A Mexican Army contingent went to help in the relief efforts, especially with kitchen trucks. Our armed forces have a lot of experience dealing with natural disasters
It was the first week of middle school and we all thought we were just going to be relaxing for the weekend with some rain outside....little did we know!!
I was in the army national guard in Houston during katrina, it was chaos. Every hurricane after i went on after that was always a mess with the government & FEMA
I was a kid living on the northshore at the time. I still have a hard time wrapping my mind around what happened.
I watched this unfold on TV here in Australia. I remember seeing footage of the hurricane and thinking, damn that's monstrous, but it's ok, it's the US. They'd be all over this.
And then seeing the news come in, and the lack of response--just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Just waiting for the Army and FEMA with helicopters and trucks and boats to respond and seeing next to nothing. It just baffled me.
I visited New Orleans years afterwards and the devastation was still there. None of it made sense. Still doesn't, really.
Yeah very similar. I heard about it happening but just shrugged my shoulders, it's the yanks I thought, they've done some amazing stuff (Berlin Airlift anyone?), they'll be alright and then the horror stories started coming out. I just couldn't understand it. Still can't really.
unfortunately, some parts of new orleans still show the scars of devastation, and some areas have never recovered. its a strong city with a strong history and resilient people. but the failure was so tragic that it was certainly hard to come back from.
i drove through new orleans east just a month ago and it still looks bad. much of the major parts of the city are back to normal. but we have family there and live only an hour away. its tough every hurricane season.
That's what happens when a governor decides it's more important to score political points and embarrass one of those eeeeevil Republicans than, y'know, do her actual job.
If America was as good at helping people as they are with waging war then the world would be a much better place.
To utilise a Star Wars analogy, the US sees itself as 'the rebels'... *SAVING EVERYTHING,* but everyone else sees them as the Galactic Empire... *DESTROYING EVERYTHING!!*
on the bright side, look at them shinny F-35s.
My absolute favorite is people that are shown the ABSOLUTE failure of government, and their response is "well, maybe if we just had MORE government, it would have been better".
It's just... insane.
I don't want to rag on the guy too hard, but he literally covered how the government blocked aid and created bureaucratic barriers to solutions, then in the next breathe is saying "If only the government had more funding". Like, my man, please, connect the dots. The government needs to get out of it's own way, and increasing funding has NEVER resulted in that, haha.
Govt also blew up Bird Point levee flooding a large part of Mississippi County in Missouri in 2011 to stop flooding and to save critical infrastructure in Cairo, Illinois. It ruined a lot of farmland and pretty much depopulated the area to a few dozen in an area of 100 sq miles.
Well done, Simon and crew. Thank you.
You know what else is sadly forgotten, is Mississippi got hit by the strongest side of the storm but because new orleans man made disaster sounded worst noone even knows Mississippi was hit, I am a katrina refugee from Mississippi, they wore sitting on their roofs, it ripped the roof off of all the houses in my neighborhood
I was a victim of government incompetence with flooding. The Illinois River connects lake Michigan to the Mississippi River. I lived in the middle. They opened the damn in Chicago to save the suburbs and beaches from flooding and closed the gates at the mouth of the Mississippi to prevent the farmlands down River from flooding. Thousands of people in the middle lost their homes and other possessions. It's a longer process so there were no fatalities, but the cost to families was enormous. I wish I could have done something but fighting a corrupt government in Illinois won't get you anywhere.
I was working at the Marriott at 859 Convention Center Blvd. and I stayed in the hotel before/ during and the days after Katrina hit. Before this hurricane a levy inspection consisted of lunch and a few rounds of golf afterwards. Kathleen Blanco is to blame more than Nagin as that storm came in way too fast. She was reluctant to call in the National Guard immediately afterwards or prep knowing the impact the storm would have on the city/ along with that part of Louisiana. Many crimes, including killings were swept under the rug by government officials after the smoke cleared. Federal employees are some of the absolute worst people to ever be put in a position of authority. I left New Orleans in April of 2006 and the USA for good in June of 2006 after realizing how little America cares about it citizens and I have not lived there since. A very dark day in our nations history.
RIP to Junior Rodriguez. RIP to Sherriff Harry Lee. RIP to BIG AL COPELAND.
Good god, I never knew how bad it was, and just when I think the incompetence has peaked, Simon keeps going.
"A Huge Federal Failure". A summary of basically EVERY endeavor by the US since WWII
Now now, the "war on drugs" has successfully imprisoned poor whites and people of color, enriching the prison industrial complex and law enforcement, lawyers and politicians
And then you have Vietnam who is the exact opposite turning into a powerful ally that would gladly help against China
@@thatrandomguyontheinternet2477 Which is great, but if I have to toss an ally into the fire it'd be India.
They have the population for an war of attrition, they aren't the best ally for sure, but they have a sizeable airforce and navy for use.
@@matthewmillburg3933 I mean if we measure mil-indy complex/pharma/etc style profits, then yeah a LOT of success stories. lol
i assisted in some of the recovery . our company imported workers from Baton Rouge and surrounding cities by the busloads every morning and sent them back home every evening . we stayed at the marriot and had to shower with truck loads of peroxide treated water . parts of bourbon street were open to the workers including bars and strip clubs . there were many military vehicles mobile and i had seen soldiers on the roofs from time to time .
The fact that Blanco said that troops would be willing to kill hurricane victims and asked for military instead of actual aid is absolutely disgusting.
As a proud U.S. citizen, I was/is OFFENDED by the governor's quote. The response by local, state & federal gov.t was/is OFFENSIVE. Definitely not my country's finest hr.
The worst thing someone in America in dire straits could possibly hear is “I’m from the government and I’m here to help!”
Yes and the most terrifying
I remember watching Bush speak live 72 hours prior to land fall.. He said " we are waiting for the request from the Governor ". I thought " remember this , and see if the Governor doesn't drag her feet . Just like the Florida governor in 92 did to Bush senior.. both of them ( governors ) should have been locked up for playing politics with their peoples lives..
Anyone who watched Bush after Katrina remembers him shaking the hand of his pal who he put in charge of FEMA (His experience? Horse racing.) and saying “Good job, Brownie!” I lost my faith in our government that day.
“Brownie you’re doing a helluva job” That and “weapons of mass destruction” are why W is hated to this day. One of our worst presidents ever.
Hearing this our country who is a developing country does a far lot better in monsoon season when we are hit by flooding
I remember when it happened. My father and several others went in when they were able to and did some volunteer work to try and help local residents that had been hit. Complete devastation everywhere. We had people that moved from New Orleans into North Texas after the disaster.
I was a Jr. in high school when the hurricane hit us here in southeast Louisiana. It was most certainly the craziest and scariest time of my life, and will forever be.
“So what went wrong?”
A: They were the wrong skin color
*rolls credits*
The same can be said about what happened with Flint. Most of there population is black. Had it been a white community there would be no water crisis.
Spotted the racists.
I've lived in New Orleans my entire life. Stayed here for Katrina. The city has still never recovered 😪.
Ray Nagin stopped being mayor in 2010, Indicted for corruption in 2013. Went to prison in 2014; Currently on house arrest due to COVID, with a possible release date of May 2023.
Having lived in New Orleans during Katrina; I can 100% confirm that it was a dumpster fire.
Thank you for making a video on this topic. Everyone thinks US only got messed up under Trump and Biden, but even as far back as Katrina the entire government has been ineffective and shown tendencies towards authoritarianism.
The sad thing is that this wasn't even the worst failure of the Bush administration
I remember Katrina and the interview with a visibly frustrated German THW (Federal Agency for Technical Relief, 99% volunteers) member who said that they were sitting on packed bags and were ready to go, yet couldn't because they needed a request/invitation from the US government which just didn't come. Or rather it came much too late.
I lived an hour north, and they wouldn't let us down there to help either.
Louisiana has had so many of these disasters, and the authorities kept refusing help, so it eventually led to what has become the Cajun Navy, a civilian volunteer organization with boats who go in to help. There was some resistance the first few times they spontaneously assembled, but then they organized.
Every flood or hurricane, hundreds of Good Ole boys and Coonasses, with giant boats and bigger trucks, would show up and force their way in to help people. During the Floods of 2016, the government had to start acknowledging them and allowed them to help. The water was so widespread, they literally had no other option or 2/3 of the capital region's population would have probably died.
Now it's just assumed that when there is water, the Cajun Navy will be there. I know people who want to buy a boat *just* to join the Navy.
I remember watching appalled from my country, that one of the richest most powerful nations could leave their people stranded to suffer and die.
New Orleans resident here. Well Chalmette (St. Bernard Parish). The blowing of the levees we're not a myth during Hurricane Betsy (over 50 years ago) and when rebuilt, they weren't back to 100%. So technically blowing of the levees are still partly to blame
I was in BCT when Katrina happened. I remember being told that we would likely be used as manpower in the relief effort and that our training may be put on hold should the need arise. We had heard about the storm in the days leading up to it but didnt hear much of it afterwards. We were never sent out to help and didn't hear much about it after that. I speculate that they started filtering mail with mention of the disaster. Since I wasn't really close to anyone and I was from the north I felt it was best to keep my nose out of it as someone could have lose a relative but nobody seemed particularly distressed. I lost a lot of faith in my decision after that.
What is BCT?
Thank you so much for speaking the truth on this!! I'm gonna be honest, I didnt expect you to mention the unbelievable failures of the local government, the gun confiscations and the threats made towards citizens by local police. I guess I got so used to my own countrymen not knowing these things, that I just assumed a guy from another country would more than likely just repeat the same story my fellow Americans were told, but I see you did proper research. Well, I apologize for thinking that.
Wow, being reminded of such a massive national failure.. Embarrassing and angering.
Hell at least this Republican president acknowledges that the natural disaster was real.
@@monsieurdorgat6864 OrAnGe MaN BaD!
@@Sonamyfan875 Yeah, he is genuinely awful. And artificially orange.
Thanks for agreeing with me.
As someone that was a EMT and in New Orleans before, during and weeks after Katrina. I can confirm it was a total shit show. After a few days DOT finally got a clear route out of the super dome area. We we're backing down the on ramps and loading patients from Charity hospital and the super dome and taking them to Baton Rouge. I will never forget being told to not stop my ambulance for any reason until we were outside the city. Followed up with if anyone got in our way that would cause us to have to stop, to run them over and keep going . Why you ask? Because if we stopped we would have been rushed by people and our lives would have been in serious danger.
This's what happens when money's given more value than innocent human lives.