Disaster Tech Pushes Ahead

So many things went wrong in the government's sucktastic response to Hurricane Katrina, it's hard to know where to begin to make fixes. One place might be the basics -- communicating, and getting a sense of the scene.

In the days after the storm, while the feds and local officials floundered, ham radio operators and teams of guerrilla geeks took it upon themselves to keep Katrina survivors informed. Drone-makers sent unmanned spotters into the skies above New Orleans, to get a look at the devastation.

The efforts -- and so many others like them -- were beyond inspirational. But the impact of these self-starters was muted, because they couldn't share information or resources all that well. The infrastructure (both hardware and soft) just wasn't in place.

That's the problem a disaster response drill, conducted last week in San Diego, aimed to correct. Everyone from IBM to Sprint to Google to U.S. Joint Forces Command participated in the test, called Strong Angel III. And everything from inflatable antennas to high-speed wireless networks to text-message news feeds to games for humanitarian aid was tried out.

It didn't all work perfectly, as the New York Times notes.

Last Monday, the group began to assemble a makeshift command center at an abandoned building near the San Diego airport. But a state-of-the-art wireless network, intended to route video images, satellite map coordinates and other data — from an impressive array of mobile computers, software analysis tools and command programs — failed to come to life.

"Finally I said, 'Lights out! Everyone turn everything off and let’s start over,'" said Brian D. Steckler, a computer scientist at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., who was in charge of more than a dozen interlocking networks at the heart of the command center.

Hundreds of computers and even cellphones were shut down, and then the network was slowly turned back on, segment by segment. Too many high-bandwidth applications had clogged the network, including a powerful video camera and "rogue" transmitters set up by participants intent on creating their own mini-networks.

But Strong Angel did meet its #1 goal -- to "mapping and developing" relationships for disaster response. Programmers from Microsoft and Google, for example, teamed up "to allow sharing [of] a single set of digital satellite maps seamlessly and to overlay event data relayed from emergency workers throughout the San Diego area," the Times said.

Most observers, like Defense Tech pal John Scott, agreed if these projects take the main lessons of the drill to the heart -- by keeping collaboration tools simple, low-bandwidth, and platform-agnostic -- they should be "hugely helpful for the next disaster."

Hybrid Truck's Katrina Duty

Diesel-electric hybrids vehicles are all the rage at the U.S. Army's Tank-automotive and Armaments Command in Warren, Michigan. Rising fuel prices and attacks on fuel convoys in Iraq have inspired a number of programs to develop more fuel-efficient trucks. The idea, according to industry, is to cut the Army truck fleet's fuel consumption by 20 percent by 2010.

But there are other advantages to hybrids, according to Gary Schmiedel at Oshkosh in Wisconsin, which builds the Army's Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck. HEMTTs are tough mothers. During the January elections in Iraq, I talked to HEMTT crews who barreled through AK fire to pick up ballots (see photo for the result). Schmiedel says a new breed of HEMTT, the A3 model, will retain all the ruggedness and combat utility of its predecessor, but with the added capability to export up to 100kW of 3-phase AC power, thanks to its new capacitor-based hybrid engine.

To test the A3, and as a public service, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Oshkosh sent a prototype to New Orleans to serve as a mobile generator. Since it uses the same standard of electricity as our public grid, exporting power is as simple as firing up the HEMTT and plugging in your appliance. The New Orleans-deployed A3 enabled workers to pump out the flooded basement of a hospital.

Hybrids are more expensive than their conventional counterparts. But they promise overall savings over their lifetimes thanks to reduced fuel consumption. And they offer many benefits besides, including those demonstrated by Oshkosh's HEMTT A3 after Katrina. These days I'm on the hybrid beat for National Defense, so expect more on the subject in coming weeks.

-- David Axe

PM's "Lessons of Katrina"

You won't like, or agree with, every conclusion -- especially not if you work for the mayor of New Orleans. But Popular Mechanics' ridiculously comprehensive cover package on the "Lessons of Katrina" is really worth a read.

Especially nice is how Pop Mech leverages its DIY home-builder know-how to offer up fixes for future hurricane-fighting. Here's an example:

In 1965, the same year Hurricane Betsy swamped large sections of New Orleans (including the Lower Ninth Ward), the Army Corps of Engineers presented Congress with an audacious blueprint for protecting the city from a fast-moving Category 3 storm. The $85 million Barrier Plan proposed sealing off Lake Pontchartrain from the gulf with massive, retractable flood barriers. The goal: Stop storm surges 25 miles east of the levees that encircle New Orleans. After Betsy, the plan was expanded to include gates on two of the four drainage canals that slice into the city from Pontchartrain (two of which breached their floodwalls after Katrina). But, environmental groups objected to the impact that the Pontchartrain floodgates might have on wildlife and wetlands. The Sewer and Water Board of New Orleans vetoed gates on the canals. So the Corps instead built higher levees and floodwalls.

Now, 40 years later, the Corps is again studying how to design gates for Pontchartrain and the New Orleans canals that will have minimal impact on the environment and navigation, but will still be able to block Katrina-strength storm surges. The report's due date: January 2008. Meanwhile, engineers are also studying how to strengthen the existing levees. One idea is to replace fragile I-wall barriers with more robust T-walls, which use three rows of foundation pilings that can withstand pressure generated by hurricane-force floodwaters. A wide concrete slab, or "skirt," on the protected side deflects overflowing water that could otherwise wash away supporting soil. T-walls held throughout Katrina without a leak.

Next month's cover story might not be half-bad, either. I hear they got some defense technology dork to look at the Pentagon's big weapons programs, and try to figure out who things are meant to fight.

Katrina Smoking Gun (or Not)

Remember when the President said he didn't think "anybody anticipated the breach of the levees"? Never mind.

"In dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms, federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees, put lives at risk in New Orleans' Superdome and overwhelm rescuers, according to confidential video footage" obtained by the AP.

Bush didn't ask a single question during the final briefing before Katrina struck on Aug. 29, but he assured soon-to-be-battered state officials: "We are fully prepared."

The footage - along with seven days of transcripts of briefings obtained by The Associated Press - show in excruciating detail that while federal officials anticipated the tragedy that unfolded in New Orleans and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast, they were fatally slow to realize they had not mustered enough resources to deal with the unprecedented disaster.

Watch the tape, if you can. It's absolutely gut-wrenching.

UPDATE 10:45 PM: Some of you are already asking, "What does Katrina have to do with defense?" It's pretty self-evident to me. But click here for an explanation.

UPDATE 03/04/06 5:09 PM: The AP issued this clarification to the story yesterday:

In a Wednesday story, The Associated Press reported that federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his Homeland Security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees in New Orleans, citing confidential video footage of an Aug. 28 briefing.

The Army Corps of Engineers considers a breach a hole developing in a levee rather than an overrun. The story should have made clear that Bush was warned about floodwaters overrunning the levees, rather than the levees breaking.

The day before Katrina, Bush was told there were grave concerns the levees could be overrun.

It wasn’t until the next morning, as the storm made landfall, that Michael Brown, then head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said Bush had asked about reports of breaches. Bush did not participate in that briefing.

To me, the "top" versus "breach" argument is largely semantic; what matters here is that the folks at the top were told in advance how bad Katrina was looking. But, check out the comments, and you'll read a lot of people telling you otherwise.

Katrina Tech: What Worked, What Sucked

In this month's Wired, Mike Keller has "the inside story of how one hurricane" -- that'd be Katrina -- "wreaked telecommunications havoc. Check out his (all-too-brief) article on "what stayed online, what didn't -- and why." DSL and cells drowned. TV stations and emergency radios rose to the surface.

FEMA Official: Feds Snoozed Through Katrina

AP: "Federal Emergency Management Agency officials did not respond to repeated warnings about deteriorating conditions in New Orleans and the dire need for help as Hurricane Katrina struck, the first FEMA official to arrive conceded Thursday."

Marty Bahamonde, a FEMA regional director, told a Senate panel investigating the government's response to the disaster that he gave regular updates to people in contact with then-FEMA Director Michael Brown as early as Aug. 28, one day before Katrina made landfall.

In most cases, he was met with silence. In an Aug. 29 phone call to Brown informing him that the first levee had broke, Bahamaonde said he received a polite thank you from Brown, who said he would check with the White House.

"I think there was a systematic failure at all levels of government to understand the magnitude of the situation," Bahamonde said...

Later, on Aug. 31, Bahamonde frantically e-mailed Brown to tell him that thousands are evacuees were gathering in the streets with no food or water and that "estimates are many will die within hours."

"Sir, I know that you know the situation is past critical," Bahamonde wrote.

Less than three hours later, however, Brown's press secretary wrote colleagues to complain that the FEMA director needed more time to eat dinner at a Baton Rouge restaurant that evening. "He needs much more that (sic) 20 or 30 minutes," wrote Brown aide Sharon Worthy.

"We now have traffic to encounter to go to and from a location of his choise (sic), followed by wait service from the restaurant staff, eating, etc. Thank you."

No wonder DHS Secretary Chertoff now says that FEMA bungling, and not an inept local response, was the primary problem with the handling of Katrina.

THERE'S MORE: The LA Times has Bahamonde's classic response to a FEMA flack's urgent request to give Brownie some more time for dinner:

"OH MY GOD!!!!!!!" Bahamonde messaged the co-worker. "I just ate an MRE" — military rations — "and crapped in the hallway of the Superdome along with 30,000 other close friends so I understand her concern about busy restaurants."

Drones on Hurricane Hunt

One of the promises of unmanned airplanes has been that they would handle jobs that were too dangerous for flesh-and-blood pilots to handle -- not just over a battlefield, but here at home, as well.

Here's a mission which fits that perfectly: Last week, an Aerosonde drone took off from southern Florida, rode through Tropical Storm Ophelia, and "provided the first-ever detailed observations" of a killer storm's "near-surface, high wind... environment."

"Today we saw what hopefully will become 'routine' in the very near future," Joe Cione, a researcher at the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, said in a statement. "If we want to improve future forecasts of hurricane intensity change we will need to get continuous low-level observations near the air-sea interface on a regular basis, but manned flights near the surface of the ocean are risky. Remote unmanned aircraft such as the Aerosonde are the only way..."

While the successful use of NOAA's WP-3D Orion, its Gulfstream-IV aircraft and the U.S. Air Force Reserve's WC-130H aircraft have been important tools in the arsenal to understand tropical cyclones, detailed observations of the near-surface hurricane environment have been elusive because of the severe safety risks associated with low level manned flight missions. The main objective of the Aerosonde project addresses this significant observational shortcoming by using the unique long endurance and low-flying attributes of the unmanned Aerosonde observing platform, flying at altitudes as low as 500 feet...

The Aerosonde platform that flew into Ophelia was specially outfitted with sophisticated instruments used in traditional hurricane observation, including instruments such as mounted Global Position System (GPS) dropwind sondes and a satellite communications system that relayed information on temperature, pressure, humidity and wind speed every half second in real-time. The Aerosonde also carried a downward positioned infrared sensor that was used to estimate the underlying sea surface temperature. All available data were transmitted in near-real time to the NOAA National Hurricane Center and AOML, where the NOAA Hurricane Research Division is located.

The environment where the atmosphere meets the sea is critically important in hurricanes as it is where the ocean's warm water energy is directly transferred to the atmosphere just above it. The hurricane/ocean interface also is important because it is where the strongest winds in a hurricane are found and is the level at which most citizens live. Observing and ultimately better understanding this region of the storm is crucial to improve forecasts of hurricane intensity and structure.

Back in '02, I wrote a story for the Times on civilian UAVs. The star of the story: an Aerosonde over the Arctic Circle, monitoring the frozen seas and skies.

THERE'S MORE: American spy sats will be watching Rita from above, the AP says. Meanwhile, NASA has transferred control of the International Space Station from Houston to Moscow.

(Big ups: UV Online, Sploid)

Rita: Watch This Blog

Defense Tech pal Kris Alexander works for Texas' homeland security department. Which makes his blog absolutely essentially reading, now that a category 5 killer hurricane is about to put the whomp on the Lone Stars.

He runs down the reasons to hope and the potential "friction points" as the state gets ready for a rumble -- from Texas' 375,000 Katrina refugees to the hospitals that have already cleared out. Bottom line:

All of this is happening without one bit of federal resources being committed. FEMA is at the state operations center, but its a state and local show right now. We never planned on FEMA saving our bacon. And no this plan didn't happen overnight. It has taken years of detailed planning to reach this point. Will there be screw-ups? Yes. Will we do better than LA and NOLA? Probably.

This isn't meant as hubris. I feel that too many people, especially in the left side of the blogosphere, have rushed to defend the LA state and local governments. I disagree. I think they screwed up regardless of whether or not FEMA/DHS was slow on the draw. I don't think, knock on wood, that anyone is going to drown and die in a nursing home on the Texas Coast.

THERE'S MORE: Kris reassures us that the big hospital on Galveston Island is being evacuated. But what about the "hot zone" biodefense lab there?

AND MORE: The Journal runs down the gagdets you need to make it through an emergency (too bad they didn't do it before I re-stocked my disaster kit). And Xeni has pics of the sonic blaster we've discussed here before.

AND MORE: "Is it my imagination," asks Kathryn Cramer, "or isn't the use of sonic blasters as weapons to deliberately inflict pain on crowds 'torture' as defined in article 1 of the UN Convention Against Torture?"

AND MORE: John Little, from Blogs of War, works in downtown Houston. "I have a window office on the eight floor of a building in the Texas Medical Center. I have to assume that in a couple of days I'll have a windowless office on the eight floor of a building in the Texas Medical Center." He's got a great list of resources for folks looking to track the storm.

Pentagon's Homeland Priorities

Spencer's article on the military's homeland security mission got me thinking. So I did a little digging, and found this Pentagon "Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support." It reinforces the money quote from Spencer's Katrina response story, that "the system that we have worked as it was designed. It was never designed to get masses of aid into place in 24 hours. And that's the problem."

Check out the teeny-tiny emphasis that the generals place on responding to a disaster that doesn't have to do with WMD:

Key Objectives of the Strategy
Within the lead, support, and enable frame work for homeland defense and civil support, the Department is focused on the following paramount objectives, listed in order of priority:

• Achieve maximum awareness of
potential threats. Together with the Intelligence Community and civil authorities, DoD works to obtain and promptly exploit all actionable information needed to protect the United States. Timely and actionable intelligence, together with early warning, is the most critical enabler to protecting the United States at a safe distance.

• Deter, intercept and defeat threats at a safe distance. The Department of Defense will actively work to deter adversaries from attacking the US homeland. Through our deterrent posture and capabilities, we will convince adversaries that threats to the US homeland risk unacceptable counteraction by the United States. Should deterrence fail, we will seek to intercept and defeat threats at a safe distance from the United States. When directed by the President or the Secretary of Defense, we will also defeat direct threats within US airspace and on US territory. In all cases, the Department of Defense cooperates closely with its domestic and international partners and acts in accordance with applicable laws.

• Achieve mission assurance. The Department of Defense performs assigned duties even under attack or after disruption. We achieve mission assurance through force protection, ensuring the security of defense critical infrastructure, and executing defense crisis management and continuity of operations (COOP).

• Support civil authorities in minimizing the damage and recovering from domestic chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or high-yield explosive (CBRNE) mass casualty attacks. The Department of Defense will be prepared to provide forces and capabilities in support of domestic CBRNE consequence management, with an emphasis on preparing for multiple, simultaneous mass casualty incidents. DoD’s responses will be planned, practiced, and carefully integrated into the national response. With the exception of a dedicated command and control element (currently the Joint Task Force Civil Support) and the Army National Guard Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Civil Support Teams, DoD will rely on dual capable forces for the domestic consequence management mission. These dual capable forces must be trained, equipped, and ready to provide timely assistance to civil authorities in times of domestic CBRNE catastrophes, programming for this capability when directed.

• Improve national and international capabilities for homeland defense and homeland security. The Department of Defense is learning from the experiences of domestic and international partners and sharing expertise with Federal, state, local, and tribal authorities, the private sector, and US allies and friends abroad. By sharing expertise, we improve the ability of the Department of Defense to carry out an active, layered defense. (emphasis mine)

Northcom's Muddy Mission

Spencer Ackerman has a dynamite article in this week's New Republic about the Defense Department's Katrina response.

Bottom line: "The system that we have worked as it was designed. It was never designed to get masses of aid into place in 24 hours. And that's the problem."

Four years after September 11, the Pentagon's homeland security apparatus still possesses more Qs than As. National Guardsmen, under the command of Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, didn't reach New Orleans until Friday. Northcom [U.S. Northern Command] established a joint task force to facilitate help, but many of the ships it ordered to the Gulf Coast just reached the area this week. It's true that the Defense Department doesn't bear the lion's share of the blame for the disastrously shiftless response to the hurricane: Its domestic operations, justifiably constrained to limit the use of the military in the United States, support state governors and the Department of Homeland Security, which spectacularly failed its first major post-September 11 test last week. But its uncertain response to Katrina underscores [Heritage Foundation homeland security guru Jim] Carafano's long-standing concern that homeland security still isn't the priority in the Pentagon that it needs to be...

[After 9/11, the Pentagon created its Northern Command, to protect the continental United States.] But, in practice, the Pentagon didn't seem to prioritize potential domestic missions. Northcom, for example, was given responsibility for directing military operations in the event of a domestic disaster but was not given command over any troops and hardware for its immediate use...It took another two years for [Assistant Secretary for Homeland Defense Paul] McHale to issue a Defense Department strategy for homeland security...

[When Katrina hit, Northcom had a] lack of immediately deployable military assets. By Thursday... [Northcom's] JTF Katrina's initial contribution of about eight naval ships and 50 helicopters had yet to arrive, nor had the hospital ship Comfort left its Baltimore port...

What's more, in at least some cases, a lack of coordination between northcom and the Guard hampered the relief effort. Colonel Roy Nomey of the Louisiana National Guard's 256th Infantry Brigade eagerly awaited the arrival of JTF Katrina's additional vehicles for his food-distribution mission, since his 300 men (the remaining 3,700 troops in his brigade are in Iraq) didn't have sufficient equipment to get them to New Orleanians in need. "My people are ready. We're poised around New Orleans to set up food distribution centers, but we don't have enough vehicles that sit high enough to get through the flooded streets," Nomey told The Dallas Morning News.

Brownie vs. "CNN Effect"

FEMA chief Michael Brown provided one of the most maddening moments in the bungled response to Katrina when he announced that he had "just learned" that hurricane victims were trapped at the New Orleans convention center -- a full day after reporters starting screaming about the hellish conditions there.

Why didn't "Brownie" know what was obvious to the average cable news couch potato? the new issue of Aviation Week provides a clue.

In the Northcom [U.S. military's Northern Command] operations center, TV coverage of disaster zones was closely monitored, prompting the dispatch of relief missions prior to the receipt of official reports or requests. During past wargames, FEMA and other agencies have been reluctant to be drawn into "the 'CNN effect' and instead rely on standard National Response Plan reporting channels, because they were afraid they'd be sucked down a rat hole," says the retired officer. Players were concerned that critical resources could be diverted by low-priority regions, only because those areas were getting media attention.

THERE'S MORE: If you haven't been checking out Katherine Cramer's site over the last two weeks, you're missing out. She's using Google's archive satellite pics to help folks figure out if their houses are safe. She's investigating the guns-for-hire that've been sent into New Orleans. And she even found some maps detailing the Army Corps of Engineers' repairs of the Big Easy's levees.

AND MORE: Speaking of Brownie, he just resigned.

Hurricane, Halt!

Note to self: Next time a super-storm wipes out a major American city, do not wait two weeks to mention Ross Hoffman's research into controlling hurricanes.

In May '04, I wrote a bit about Hoffman and his work for Wired News:

For 25 years, Ross Hoffman has had a vision: to use tiny changes in the environment to alter the paths of hurricanes, slow down snow storms and turn dark days bright.

For most of those years, Hoffman kept his ideas largely to himself. His adviser at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology told him weather control was too outlandish for his Ph.D. thesis. The chances of a buttoned-down foundation or government agency funding such research were so slim, Hoffman didn't even bother to ask.

But, in 2001, all that changed. Hoffman stumbled upon a tiny, obscure cranny of the American space program -- the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts, or NIAC. In this $4 million-a-year agency, Hoffman found a place where the wildest of ideas were not only tolerated, they were welcome...

With his [NIAC research grant], Hoffman tweaked a weather-prediction program to show that moving a hurricane was possible -- at least in theory. Here's how: You need a ring of satellites in orbit, channeling the sun's energy, stretching around the Earth. The machines would beam power to the planet, using microwaves. But, tuned to 183 GHz, they could also heat up small regions of the atmosphere by a degree or two. Those small changes could have enormous impact, Hoffman's simulation showed. A deadly hurricane, headed for the Hawaiian island of Kauai, drifted off into the Pacific, harmlessly.

"One of the great things about NIAC is that they never say, 'That's crazy, you can never build a fleet of solar-powered space stations,'" Hoffman said.
In this Scientific American article from last October, Hoffman fleshes out his storm-curbing idea. If microwave-blasting satellites aren't available, he suggests, maybe we could coat "the ocean surface with a thin film of a biodegradable oil that slows evaporation."

(Big ups: /.)

NoLa Biolabs: No Prob?

The biodefense labs in and around New Orleans appear to be okay, Defense Tech readers are finding.

"Foo" spotted this announcement from Tulane, which says that its primate center, located in nearby Convington, is "already functioning under near normal conditions." And veteran LSU anthrax researcher Martin Hugh-Jones told Defense Tech pal Nick Schwellenbach:

"Off the cuff I would not expect a great threat as without electricity the refridgerators will slowly warm up and thus kill any stored organisms. Ditto any liquid nitrogen storage devices. ..."

"...the present BSL-3 labs now have locks, some mechanical, some electronic/electric. So anyone wanting to break into such a lab in a possibly abandoned LSU or Tulane or LADHHS building in New Orleans will have to have a sledgehammer with them... [and that person would have to] know exactly where to go to get what."

"Yesterday I had the opportunity of discussing this problem with Dr Raoult Ratard, the Louisiana State Epidemiologist, who temporarily has his office & staff in Baton Rouge. He said that they got police permission to open the LADHHS PHS BSL-3 lab, and suitably supervised they cut the chain on the door, got in, poured chlorox into their single vial of Brucellas suis from a recent investigation --- all that was in the laboratory --- and then got on with the real business which was to recover the two laptop computers in the lab (using the bolt cutter again) which they really needed in Baton Rouge."

THERE'S MORE: "I just spoke with Von Roebuck, a CDC [Centers for Disease] spokesman," Nick reports. He told me “the CDC did do a call out to programs associated with the Select Agent Program” [that's lab-speak for biodefense -- ed.] and there were “no losses, no problems” related to Hurricane Katrina. The facilities in the path of the Hurricane “put high security measures in place,” he said.

To which Rutgers University biomchemist Richard Ebright responded:

I would translate "put high security measures in place" as "locked the freezer and the lab door before leaving." I would be surprised if more than that has been done.

NoLa's Biolab Mystery

Anybody know what happened to New Orleans' anthrax labs? That's the excellent and scary question Defense Tech pal Russ Kick asks over at the Memory Hole.

In and around the Big Easy are a number of Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3) labs, meant to handle some of the nastier biological agents out there -- stuff like anthrax, plague, and genetically-engineering mousepox. Louisiana State University’s Medical School and the State of Louisiana both ran BSL-3s within the city. Tulane kept 5,000 monkeys for biodefense studies in its "National Primate Research Center," located in nearby Covington.

"What's happened to the infected animals? Are they free and roaming?" Russ wants to know. "Are they dead, with their diseased bodies floating in the flood waters? And what about the cultures and vials of the diseases? Are they still secure? Are they being stolen? Were they washed away, now forming part of the toxic soup that coats the city?"

And not to turn the fear dial up any higher, but, if the national average is any guide, the keepers of the Louisiana labs weren't particularly experienced. 97 percent of the "principal investigators" who got biodefense grants from the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases were newbies to that kind of work.

The government oversight these neophytes get is minimal, at best. Instead, the labs are expected to police themselves, through "Institutional Biosafety Committees." But the records of these committees is, to put it politely, uneven. When the Sunshine Project, a biowatchdog group, "asked for all minutes of all meetings of [Tulane's] IBC since January 1st, 2002, Tulane replied that it has no responsive documents. That is, Tulane University cannot produce a single page of minutes of any Institutional Biosafety Committee meeting for the past two and half years."

THERE'S MORE: "What happened to all the cargo at the Port?" wonders Adam Rogers, Defense Tech's editor at Wired. "In October of 2001, the executive director of the Port of New Orleans, Gary LaGrange, told me that the Port of New Orleans has about a quarter of all the containerized cargo traffic on the Gulf of Mexico. It was the country’s largest importer of steel, rubber, and coffee. Steel was going down drastically, but still. But what always really interested me the most was that New Orleans was the largest London Metals Exchange port in the country — that’s precious metals. Platinum and gold don’t rust..."

Internet Phone, Lifesaver

During New York's blackout in 2003, it was easier to get online than to make a phone call. Apparently, the same was true last week in New Orleans, the Wall Street Journal reports. The only way the Mayor's office was able contact anyone was over an Internet-enabled phone.

For days after Hurricane Katrina's devastating rampage through this city, a small corps of city leaders holed up at the Hyatt Hotel. They had virtually no way to communicate with the outside world.

A command center set up before the storm stopped working when the backup generator ran out of diesel fuel. Cellphone towers had been knocked out by high winds. Many land lines in the area were unusable.

When emergency power finally returned to the Hyatt, Scott Domke, a member of the city's technology team, remembered that he had recently set up an Internet phone account with Vonage Holdings Corp. He was able to find a working socket in a conference room and linked his laptop to an Internet connection.

At 12:27 a.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 31, the mayor's inner circle made its first outside call in two days. Eventually, the team was able to get eight lines running from the single Vonage account. That evening, the phone rang and it was President Bush calling from Air Force One.

(Big ups: War & Piece)

Darpa's Crisis Code

The Pentagon's way-out research arm is nothing if not forward-thinking. Back in the 90's, Darpa kicked off a pair of software projects that seem almost perfectly suited to coping with a crisis like Katrina. Too bad they're not in wider use now.

Cognitive Agent Architecture (COUGAAR) is the descendent of Darpa research's into building semi-autonomous, adaptive bits of software that could quickly put together detailed logistical plans in "harsh, chaotic conditions." 1000 software agents on 100 machines were supposed to be able to plot out the logistics for a 180-day military deployment, with 45% of the infrastructure blown to hell.

"Originally designed to survive a bombing, it should handle a flood similarly," says a former COUGAAR programmer. "Hopefully something useful can come out of the quarter billion spent on it."

Darpa stopped funding the effort last year. But COUGAAR lives on, as an open source, "Java-based architecture for the construction of large-scale distributed agent-based applications."

The Enhanced Consequence Management Planning and Support System (ENCOMPASS) was even more directly relevant to Katrina-like situations. It was a suite of computer programs designed to manage the response to catastrophes and to track the victims. The focus was on a biological attack. But the tools were adaptable to all sorts of disasters, David Siegrist, a former consultant on the project, says.

An ENCOMPASS "playbook" pulled together the standard procedures for coping with different tragic events -- a fire and a building collapse, say -- into a single set of guidelines. Related software promised to handle "the management, visualization, and documentation of... incident response" as well as provide "the ability to know the location of all... responders, equipment and supplies that are necessary in controlling the event," according to an ENCOMPASS presentation. A third program would track casualties, from on-scene triage to the hospital bed.

Components of ENCOMPASS have been used to cope with 9/11 and were put through a trial run at the 2001 inaugural. The Navy and U.S. Joint Forces Command have also worked with parts of the package. But for ENCOMPASS as a whole -- "I don't recall there being a lot of interest," Siegrist says.

Bureaucrats 1, Guerilla Geeks 0

On Tuesday, an FCC-sanctioned team of techies landed in Houston, ready to set up a low-power radio station that would keep the Katrina evacuees housed there informed of the relief effort.

But even before the radio crew set foot in the Astrodome, the local paper-pushers have been working overtime to scuttle the project.

First, they demanded that the team come up with 10,000 portable radios before they could begin their broadcasts. No sweat: by Wednesday, the crew had Sony and Democracy Now ready to provide the gear.

So then, volunteer Jacob Appelbaum tells us, the bureacrats came up with more reasons -- or really, non-reasons -- why the radio station couldn't go on-air.

Rita Obey is the person that told Austin Airwaves they had to have 10,000 radios before they could broadcast. We purchased a number of radios and while we’ve had some issues with this, it was just a meaningless golden egg. We called her bluff by getting the radios lined up to be purchased and they threw something else out.

At 16:29 (CST) today, RW Royal Jr. Incident Commander of the JIC (Joint Information Committee) has denied Austin Airwaves the ability to run the emergency low power FM radio station inside of the dome. This is contrary to the FCC licenses that have been issued to Austin Airwaves. However, R.W. Royal Jr. is a member of the JIC. He has decided to deny the request. When they asked why they were being turned down, they were told that the Astrodome could not provide them with electricity. When the Austin Airwaves team offered to run on battery backup, they were still denied.

This is an OUTRAGE.

The people on the ground I spoke with personally asked me why I was there. I told them that I was with a group helping to bring emergency radio information to them. Broadcast from right inside the dome. Those people were overjoyed to hear that they would get a radio station with emergency information, with information on job interviews, food, housing, lost children, found person, clothing and other important information. It breaks my heart.

Why has this man denied this? Why is the government going out of its way to stop us from helping people?

Why? Here's a hint.

THERE'S MORE: Of course, the ones at the Astrodome are lucky. In Oklahoma, evacuees have been herded by FEMA into what appear to be detention camps.

FEMA will not allow any of the kitchen facilities in any of the cabins to be used by the occupants due to fire hazards. FEMA will deliver meals to the cabins. The refugees will be given two meals per day by FEMA. They will not be able to cook. In fact, the "host" goes on to explain, some churches had already enquired about whether they could come in on weekends and fix meals for the people staying in their cabin. FEMA won't allow it because there could be a situation where one cabin gets steaks and another gets hot dogs - and... it could cause a riot. It gets worse.

He then precedes to tell us that some churches had already enquired into whether they could send a van or bus on Sundays to pick up any occupants of their cabins who might be interested in attending church. FEMA will not allow this. The occupants of the camp cannot leave the camp for any reason. If they leave the camp they may never return. They will be issued FEMA identification cards and "a sum of money" and they will remain within the camp for the next 5 months

(Big ups: Xeni)

AND MORE: Over at Wired News, Joel sets the Astrodome radio story straight.

Makeshift Towers for Aid Air

"Hurricane Katrina knocked out much of the aviation communications infrastructure along the Gulf Coast," Federal Computer Week observes. But jury-rigged control towers and mobile satellite uplinks, installed by federal workers, let thousands of relief planes land.

“We have patched together the system with mobile communications equipment, satellite-based equipment and power generators,” FAA spokesman Greg Martin said. “That’s all you can do when you are looking at a region with no infrastructure..."

Last weekend, Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport became one of the nation’s top five busiest airports, as employees handled 3,300 flights per day -- quadruple the normal air traffic levels, according to FAA officials.

The airport is the main conduit for relief and relocation efforts. Because of the heavier traffic, the FAA brought in a portable air traffic control tower to magnify the communications’ capacity of the airport’s main tower. Twenty-four technical operations specialists and 18 air traffic control specialists work in the facility.

In Mississippi, the Defense Department deployed a temporary tower at Stennis International Airport to assist emergency relief aircraft.

The military has also launched radar devices and radio communications on aircraft to fill in connectivity gaps.

Today, radar is slowing coming back online, say officials from the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.

Ham Radio's Helping Hand

"With telephones down and wireless service disrupted, at least one group of people did manage last week to use technology to come to the rescue of those in need," MSNBC notes. " Often unsung, amateur radio operators regularly assist in emergency situations. Hurricane Katrina was no exception."

For the past week, operators of amateur, or ham, radio have been instrumental in helping residents in the hardest hit areas, including saving stranded flood victims in Louisiana and Mississippi...

When disaster strikes, ham networks spring into action. The Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES) consists of licensed amateurs who have voluntarily registered their qualifications and equipment for communications duty in the public service.

In this disaster a number of ham emergency stations and networks have been involved in providing information about this disaster – from WX4NHC, the amateur radio station at the National Hurricane Center to the Hurricane Watch Net, the Waterway Net, Skywarn and the Salvation Army Team Emergency Radio Network (SATERN).

On Monday, Aug. 29, a call for help involving a combination of cell telephone calls and amateur radio led to the rescue of 15 people stranded by floodwaters on the roof of a house in New Orleans. Unable to get through an overloaded 911 system, one of those stranded called a relative in Baton Rouge. That person called another relative, who called the local American Red Cross.

Army Tests Super-Levees

"With New Orleans in ruins, hydrological engineers are looking to new technologies to bolster aging earthen levee systems," Defense Tech pal John Gartner reports in today's Wired News.

The Army is currently testing products that can temporarily raise the height of levees to determine if they can be assembled faster than the usual defense of filling and stacking sandbags.

The Rapid Deployment Flood Wall from Geocell Systems is a series of interlocking sections of plastic that are filled at the scene with sand or soil and can be layered as high as necessary.

The Hesco wall is a metal basket with fabric sides that is filled with soil. Hesco walls can be folded flat for easy shipment, according to Hesco Bastion director of operations Jared Lyons, who said his products are being used to protect against floodwaters in Texas and Florida.

The Portadam system is a series of metal rods that are bolted together and do not have to be filled with soil...

But so far, at least, the problem of holding back floodwaters has progressed little beyond the ancient and time-consuming technique of piling on more dirt.

THERE'S MORE: "It occurred to me that there might be a way to use superabsorbent polymers to form self-building flood protection barriers or to slow the flow through a breach," says reader KP, a CalTech Ph.D. candidate in engineering. "Sure enough, a quick search reveals a couple of solutions already out there."

http://www.finetech.bz/pages/4/page4.html?refresh=1092815632729

http://www.protectionconnect.com/sandless.html

As best I can tell the mechanism of swelling is osmotic pressure, so these bags would not perform as well for seawater as they would for fresh water. Also, it’s not clear how well the bag contents would resist deformation due to water pressure. Neverthless, reducing the mass logistics of a flood wall by a factor 10,100, or 1000 is a big deal, and I expect that an imaginative individual could find a way to make it work.

Geek Rescue Squad Needs Gear

Defense Tech whiskey buddy Joel Johnson is heading down to Houston, and linking up with a team of guerilla geeks who've been appointed by the FCC to establish wireless comms on the Gulf Coast. He could use your help, with everything from hand-held radios to second-hand laptops to port-a-potties. Click on over, to lend a hand.

Katrina: Drive for Five

It's no secret that one of the keys to any rescue effort is money. And the folks in Louisiana and Mississippi need our help, bad.

So I'm asking Defense Tech readers to come up with five thousand dollars over the next five days to give to the Red Cross or to Mercy Corps. Click here or here to donate.

I've just made the first contribution: a thousand dollars, which ain't easy on a freelance writer's budget. Now, you guys come up with the other four grand. Once you've donated, drop a note in the comments section to say how much you've given.

Let's do this.

THERE'S MORE: You guys rock. As of 11pm on Monday, you've given $4605 -- $605 more than the goal I set, with a day to spare. Can we get another $400 in that remaining day?

AND MORE: Wow. $1140 on Tuesday, bringing the total to $5745. Add in my G, and this "Drive for Five" just netted $6745. Anybody wanna make it an even seven grand? Seventy-five hundred?

AND MORE: I'd be a pretty lame fiancee if I didn't give a shout-out to the future Mrs. Defense Tech, for donating a thousand bucks of her own. Thanks, Lizzie!

AND MORE: Seven hundred more as of Thursday noon -- five bucks south of $7500, on other words. Anyone for a group hug?

Dutch Counter-Flood Tech

Plety of cities around the world are below sea level, like New Orleans. So how do they keep the waters at bay? The Times looks at the "countries with long histories of flooding [that] have turned science, technology and raw determination into ways of forestalling disaster."

After devastating floods killed nearly 2,000 people in the Netherlands, the Dutch erected a futuristic system of coastal defenses that is admired around the world today as one of the best barriers against the sea's fury - one that could withstand the kind of storm that happens only once in 10,000 years."

Linking offshore islands with dams, seawalls and other structures, the Dutch erected a kind of forward defensive shield, drastically reducing the amount of vulnerable coastline. Mr. de Haan, director of the water branch of the Road and Hydraulic Engineering Institute of the Dutch Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management, said the project had the effect of shortening the coast by more than 400 miles.

For New Orleans, experts say, a similar forward defense would seal off Lake Pontchartrain from the Gulf of Mexico. That step would eliminate a major conduit by which hurricanes drive storm surges to the city's edge - or, as in the case of Katrina, through the barriers.

The Dutch also increased the height of their dikes, which now loom as much as 40 feet above the churning sea. (In New Orleans, the tallest flood walls are about half that size.) The government also erected vast complexes of floodgates that close when the weather turns violent but remain open at other times, so saltwater can flow into estuaries, preserving their ecosystems and the livelihoods that depend on them.

The Netherlands maintains large teams of inspectors and maintenance crews that safeguard the sprawling complex, which is known as Delta Works. The annual maintenance bill is about $500 million. "It's not cheap," Mr. de Haan said. "But it's not so much in relation to the gross national product. So it's a kind of insurance."

Why Katrina Matters

"I thought the name of this web site was Defense Tech?" asks JD, echoing the e-mails of several folks who wrote in over the weekend. "Enough with your personal political views about Katrina. This is not the place for it."

With all respect, JD, I have to disagree. This isn't about politics. This is about all of our safety. Katrina, and the response to Katrina, has become a national security issue – maybe the biggest one the country has faced since 9/11. As the editor of a website devoted to the future of national security, I can't – and won't – avoid something so important. It wouldn't be right.

After the September 11th attacks, the Department of Homeland Security was put together with two major goals in mind: deter further terrorist strikes, and respond to disasters, both natural and man-made -- since the evacuation plans, medical responses, and the like are largely the same in either case.

Four years and countless billions of dollars later, we've seen a clumsy, ten-thumbed response from DHS. Ships and troops were delayed for days before they were ordered to the disaster zone. Tens of thousands were left stranded, without food or water or medical care, while relief agencies were turned away.

All this, after a disaster everyone knew was coming. Now, imagine what would have happened after a surprise attack. Al Qaeda operatives have to be wondering the same thing. It's as if we've hung a giant "kick me" sign around the nation's neck. No wonder Republicans from President Bush to Newt Gingrich to Joe Scarborough have all called the federal effort "not acceptable."

In the last few days, some have tried to shift the blame onto the state and city authorities. A whole bunch of it is well-deserved. The locals had more than their fare share of screw-ups. As one homeland security source told me:

NOLA [city officials] should not have allowed that many folks to stay in a shelter of last resort. Why didn't they get those people out? Plus, the shelter was fucked up. No supplies and no sanitation. Plus, why did they let special needs (ederly, infants, medically unfit) into the shelter. Those people should have gotten out. The feds would have provided tons of buses and transportation if the need had been identified early on....like years ago.

But the City of New Orleans' ability to cope with a crisis isn't a matter of national security. The Department of Homeland Security's ability is. Ray Nagin isn't going to be responding to terrorist attacks. That's what DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff and his team have been hired to do.

THERE'S MORE: With fingers pointing in so many directions, there's been some question about whether the Feds or the locals are in charge after a catastrophe. Here's what the U. S. Department of Homeland Security Strategic Plan has to say about the DHS' role:

Response -- Lead, manage and coordinate the national response to acts of terrorism, natural disasters, or other emergencies.

Recovery -- Lead national, state, local and private sector efforts to restore services and rebuild communities after acts of terrorism, natural disasters, or other emergencies.

Does DHS need the locals' permission in order to act? Nope, says the Department's National Response Plan. In fact, the document calls for a "proactive Federal response to catastrophic events."

A catastrophic event is any natural or manmade incident, including terrorism, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the population, infrastructure, environment, economy, national morale, and/or government functions. A catastrophic event could result in sustained national impacts over a prolonged period of time; almost immediately exceeds resources normally available to State, local, tribal, and private-sector authorities in the impacted area; and significantly interrupts governmental operations and emergency services to such an extent that national security could be threatened. All catastrophic events are Incidents of National Significance...

Guiding principles for proactive Federal response include the following:

■ The primary mission is to save lives; protect critical infrastructure, property, and the environment; contain the event; and preserve national security.

■ Standard procedures regarding requests for assistance may be expedited or, under extreme circumstances, suspended in the immediate aftermath of an event of catastrophic magnitude.

■ Identified Federal response resources will deploy and begin necessary operations as required to commence life-safety activities.

■ Notification and full coordination with States will occur, but the coordination process must not delay or impede the rapid deployment and use of critical resources. States are urged to notify and coordinate with local governments regarding a proactive Federal response.

■ State and local governments are encouraged to conduct collaborative planning with the Federal Government as a part of "steady-state" preparedness for catastrophic incidents.

(Big ups: TPM Cafe)

Drones Over NoLa

Defense Tech first spotted the 8-foot long, sausage-shaped Silver Fox drone back in early 2003, right before it was headed off to Iraq.

Now, it looks like five of the robo-planes, equipped with thermal cameras, will be headed to New Orleans, to hunt for Katrina survivors.

Five Silver Fox "unmanned aerial vehicles," or UAVs, equipped with thermal imaging technology to detect the body heat of storm survivors, are en route to the crippled city, Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Curt Weldon said.

Mr. Weldon told reporters in Baton Rouge that he had bypassed government bureaucracy to obtain the drones from a private company to be used in search and rescue operations in New Orleans, scene of one of the worst natural disasters in US history.

"With thermal imaging capability ... you can actually see into the buildings and see the body image of a person still alive," Mr Weldon, vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees, said.

"It could help assess whether there are people trapped alive in attics or upper floors," he said. "Once you've got them pinpointed you can send rescue teams in."

(Big ups: JQP)

THERE'S MORE: Over at Winds of Change, Murdoc has a terrific round-up of the Navy's response to Katrina.

AND MORE: A few weeks back, we mentioned the giant sonic blasters being tested by the L.A. Sherriff's Department. Some of the screechers are about to be shipped to the Gulf Coast, "so authorities can use the tools for crowd control, aid distribution and rescue operations," Xeni reports in Wired News.

Feds Gov't Blocks Red Cross

Un-fucking-believable:

"The Homeland Security Department has requested and continues to request that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans," said Red Cross spokeswoman Renita Hosler.

"Right now access is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities. We have been at the table every single day [asking for access]. We cannot get into New Orleans against their orders."

UPDATE 9/8/05: The Red Cross also says "the state Homeland Security Department had requested -- and continues to request -- that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane." Thanks to the commenters for the catch. I was on the road. But still -- I should've gotten to it sooner.

Which almost makes this colossal screw-up look good by comparison...

Several states ready and willing to send National Guard troops to the rescue in New Orleans didn't get the go-ahead until days after the storm struck...

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson offered Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco help from his state's National Guard last Sunday, the day before Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana. Blanco accepted, but paperwork needed to get the troops en route didn't come from Washington until late Thursday.

(Big ups: Sploid, which has been on fire since this story broke)

THERE'S MORE: David Brooks -- usually one of the Bush administration's most reliable editorial pals -- is livid. Channeling the American Scene, he calls Katrina "the anti-9/11."

On Sept. 11, Rudy Giuliani took control. The government response was quick and decisive. The rich and poor suffered alike. Americans had been hit, but felt united and strong. Public confidence in institutions surged.

Last week in New Orleans, by contrast, nobody took control. Authority was diffuse and action was ineffective. The rich escaped while the poor were abandoned. Leaders spun while looters rampaged. Partisans squabbled while the nation was ashamed.

The first rule of the social fabric - that in times of crisis you protect the vulnerable - was trampled. Leaving the poor in New Orleans was the moral equivalent of leaving the injured on the battlefield. No wonder confidence in civic institutions is plummeting.

AND MORE: "Three tons of food ready for delivery by air to refugees in St. Bernard Parish and on Algiers Point sat on the Crescent City Connection bridge Friday afternoon as air traffic was halted because of President Bush’s visit to New Orleans," the Times-Picayune reports.

(Big ups: BJ)

AND MORE: "While federal and state emergency planners scramble to get more military relief to Gulf Coast communities stricken by Hurricane Katrina, a massive naval goodwill station has been cruising offshore, underused and waiting for a larger role in the effort," the Chicago Trib (via John) says. "The USS Bataan, a 844-foot ship designed to dispatch Marines in amphibious assaults, has helicopters, doctors, hospital beds, food and water. It also can make its own water, up to 100,000 gallons a day. And it just happened to be in the Gulf of Mexico when Katrina came roaring ashore."

AND MORE: Xeni is calling bullshit on Army Times, which called looters in New Orleans "the insurgency."

It's bad, for sure. And she's right to say that "We are talking about fellow American citizens here -- in America. Not insurgents. Not refugees. Not enemies. Americans."

But Army Times doesn't speak for the Army. I'd be shocked if soldiers started using the term.

FEMA Chief's Sorry Past

You can tell the quality of a leader by the kinds of people he surrounds himself with. So what does this say about George Bush?

The federal official in charge of the bungled New Orleans rescue was fired from his last private-sector job overseeing horse shows.

And before joining the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a deputy director in 2001, GOP activist Mike Brown had no significant experience that would have qualified him for the position.

The Oklahoman got the job through an old college friend [Bush campaign chief Joseph Allbaugh -- ed.] who at the time was heading up FEMA.

(Big ups: Josh)

DHS WTF?

Organizing thousands and thousands of people, in hellish conditions and in a hurry, is tough work. Let's take that as a given. But still: We're now a work week into a natural disaster that had been forecast for years, and New Orleans "is being run by thugs," the city's emergency preparedness director tells the Times. "Some people there have not eaten or drunk water for three or four days, which is inexcusable."

Damn right. And this Slate article on the Department of Homeland Security's underwhelming response to Katrina is absolutely dead-on. (Click here for ways you can help.)

How is it possible that with the fourth anniversary of 9/11 almost upon us, the federal government doesn't have in hand the capability to prepare for and then manage a large urban disaster, natural or man-made? In terms of the challenge to government, there is little difference between a terrorist attack that wounds many people and renders a significant portion of a city uninhabitable, and the fallout this week from the failure of one of New Orleans' major levees. Indeed, a terrorist could have chosen a levee for his target. Or a dirty-bomb attack in New Orleans could have caused the same sort of forced evacuation we are seeing and the widespread sickness that is likely to follow.

Chertoff's Department of Homeland Security demonstrated today that it could organize an impressive press conference in Washington, lining up every participating civilian or military service from the Coast Guard to the Federal Emergency Management Agency to promise its cooperation. But on the ground in Louisiana, where it counts, DHS is turning out to be the sum of its inefficient parts. The department looks like what its biggest critics predicted: a new level of bureaucracy grafted onto a collection of largely ineffectual under-agencies.

What has DHS been doing if not readying itself and its subcomponents for a likely disaster? The collapse of a New Orleans levee has long led a list of worst-case urban crisis scenarios. The dots had already been connected...

Located only three hours from New Orleans is Fort Polk, home of the 4th Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division, a light infantry unit with about 3,000 soldiers. Also at Fort Polk is the Joint Readiness Training Center, which prepares military units to respond rapidly to crises abroad. The 4th Brigade has been training for duty in Afghanistan. Why was it also not ready to take on a local disaster scenario in hurricane season? Or at the least, once the National Hurricane Center predicted that the eye of Katrina would come close to New Orleans, couldn't DHS have deployed the military to help shore up the levees?

And in the event of a WMD attack, when there would likely be no warning at all, what is DHS's contingency plan for moving into position the army or the marines to restore order and sustain life? In the wake of Katrina and the breached levee, the answer seems to be not much of one. In the wake of 9/11, that is worse than incomprehensible. It is unforgivable.

And one other thing: on my plane ride back to New York from Oakland tonight, I saw Chertoff and FEMA director Michael Brown on every two-bit cable talk show on Jet Blue's dial. Why exactly are these guys taking the time to chat with Hannity and Colmes? Don't these guys have, y'know, jobs to go do at a time like this?

Besides, the best on-air commentary of the flight came from Jack Cafferty, who's gone from local-news-stuffed-shirt to don't-give-a-fuck-TV-truth-teller:

I gotta tell you something, we got five or six hundred letters before the show actually went on the air, and no one - no one - is saying the government is doing a good job in handling one of the most atrocious and embarrassing and far-reaching and calamatous things that has come along in this country in my lifetime. I'm 62. I remember the riots in Watts, I remember the earthquake in San Francisco, I remember a lot of things. I have never, ever, seen anything as bungled and as poorly handled as this situation in New Orleans. Where the hell is the water for these people? Why can't sandwiches be dropped to those people in the Superdome. What is going on? This is Thursday! This storm happened 5 days ago. This is a disgrace. And don't think the world isn't watching. This is the government that the taxpayers are paying for, and it's fallen right flat on its face as far as I can see.

THERE'S MORE: Even the President is now saying that the relief efforts "are not acceptable."

Homeland Secure?

We've all heard the term a zillion times. But what does "homeland security" mean, really?

Since 2001, when the phrase became part of our everyday vocabulary, homeland security has been shorthand for preventing, and responding to, terrorists. Now Katrina has struck in New Orleans and in Mississippi. (Click here for a list of ways you can help.) The results, in terms of lives and property lost, are in the same catastrophic class as 9/11.

But the government's reaction has been underwhelming, Eric Tolbert, FEMA's former disaster response chief, tells Knight-Ridder (via TP). "Weakened by diversion into terrorism," he says.

Federal flood control spending for southeastern Louisiana has been chopped from $69 million in 2001 to $36.5 million in 2005, according to budget documents. Federal hurricane protection for the Lake Pontchartrain vicinity in the Army Corps of Engineers' budget dropped from $14.25 million in 2002 to $5.7 million this year. Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu requested $27 million this year.

Both the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper and a local business magazine reported that the effects of the budget cuts at the Army Corps of Engineers were severe.

In 2004, the Corps essentially stopped major work on the now-breached levee system that had protected New Orleans from flooding. It was the first such stoppage in 37 years, the Times-Picayune reported...

The Army Corps' New Orleans office, facing a $71 million cut, also eliminated funds to pay for a study on how to protect the Crescent City from a Category 5 storm, New Orleans City Business reported in June...

[I]n the 1990s, in planning for a New Orleans nightmare scenario, the federal government figured it would pre-deploy nearby ships with pumps to remove water from the below-sea-level city and have hospital ships nearby, said James Lee Witt, who was FEMA director under President Clinton.

Federal officials said a hospital ship would leave from Baltimore on Friday.

Hopefully, Katrina will trigger a larger conversation about what it means to keep America safe. Maybe funds for coping with natural disasters won't be so hard to come by. Maybe some of those billions taken out of flu and TB research can be reinstated. Maybe we can have a more have a more honest assessment of where risk really lies.

Katrina: Relief Links

My brother Dan was one of the lucky ones; he left New Orleans long before Katrina made landfall. But even the fortunate, like him, have no idea whether they will have homes or jobs when they return -- and may not know for weeks, or even months.

Dan is about to start the 1400-mile dr