Big Easy to Big Empty: A Film By Greg Palast

New Orleans deserted as Guard move in

As almost two million fled New Orleans ahead of the “mother of all storms”, thousands of rescue workers and volunteers were rushing to the area this morning in a concerted effort to prevent a repeat of the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

The huge influx of government officials, soldiers and Red Cross helpers provided a stark contrast to the lax and confused reaction to the disaster three years ago.

The entire 7,000-strong Louisiana National Guard and 16,000 reservists from neighbouring states were mobilised to prevent looting in the Big Easy during this week’s Republican National Convention. As the storm bore down on the coast, convoys of ambulances and emergency vehicles, their lights blazing, snaked along the otherwise deserted motorways.

The Red Cross deployed 3,000 of the 40,000 volunteers known as “Katrina babes”, recruited after the 2005 hurricane.

Yesterday’s mass-evacuation took place after an order issued by Ray Nagin, the Mayor of New Orleans, who said: “You need to be scared, you need to be concerned, and you need to get your butts moving out of New Orleans right now. This is the storm of the century.

“This storm is so powerful – and growing more powerful – that I’m not sure we’ve seen anything like it.”

One Hour Ago…

Floodwaters overtopped New Orleans’ industrial canal, raising concerns that the city’s fragile levee system would not be able to withstand the torrential rains the city faces as Hurricane Gustav makes landfall.

All eyes are on the network of embankments that keep the city from flooding. The levees have remained in a state of disrepair since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Big Easy three years ago.

The walls of the canal, located in the city’s Upper Ninth Ward, are 12.2 feet. The water level is just over 11 feet, according to Major Tim Kurgan of the Army Corps of Engineers. The water has yet to breech the levee, but it is splashing over.

“We are very concerned about this overtopping,” Kurgan told ABC affiliate WGNO.

No one is confident – not the mayor, not the Army Corps of Engineers, not the Department of Homeland Security – that the levees will hold. Just one-third of the levees have been repaired in the last three years and an additional 350 miles of embankments still need to be fixed.

Eighteen pump stations along the levees have been repaired, but 12 more have not been improved.⁺⁺

The city and the federal government are preparing for the worst.

⁺⁺ Good thing McCain and Bush and the GOP are on top of this, and so much had been done by the Bush administration to repair the levees since Katrina, otherwise this could be a real problem… :-/