- Video on Fox tonight showed more of the marina area near the 17th Street Canal levee break. The courts at Coconut Beach were somewhat flooded, though it doesn’t look as deep there as around the condos on the other side of the berm. The Dock and the surrounding restaurants are completely gone, and the wreckage is not only piled up against the nearby bridge but also in the corner of the courts opposite the clubhouse. A part of the clubhouse appears to still be standing, as is the grey, two-story building next door (the one with the beauty shop) and the aforementioned garage building behind, but there didn’t seem to be anything standing beyond that, towards the lake.
- On the other hand, the homes along the periphery of the marina (which appear to be houseboats…I never noticed that before) seem from a distance to be largely intact. Not so the boats, which are piled up here and there.
- Douglas Brinkley is reporting that the old Georgian and Greek revival homes in the Garden District survived the storm well, but the newer “prefab” houses, shotgun shacks, and projects didn’t.
- It sounds like the situation downtown has deteriorated so much that the TV crews have largely evacuated. Not just looting, but rapes, murders, and roving armed gangs, even inside the Superdome itself. It is truly amazing that so little seems to be being done. Three days? How on earth can it be that hard to get truckloads of supplies into town, if they can get buses in and out? It’s apalling. The National Guard is finally going in tonight, so hopefully things will return to some semblance of order and sanity soon, if not soon enough.
- On the other hand, I don’t buy the NOPD being overwhelmed or the National Guard being stretched too thin and suchlike as excuses for the lawless and uncivilized behavior being reported, or even the extreme conditions the people are living under there. Are they, particularly those in the Superdome, doing anything to organize themselves, or to take responsibility for managing the situation on their own? They may indeed, and it simply escapes the attention of the reporters on the scene.
- Randi Rhodes, hive queen of the barking moonbats at Air America Radio, seems to think Bush is enjoying himself in all this, what with all the people dying…y’know. I listened to about twenty minutes of her show yesterday and again today on my drive home — it was non-stop whining about Bush and how everything is his fault and how he could have prevented the disaster. I typically flip between Hugh Hewitt and Randi Rhodes on my drive home each day, and today Hewitt was talking about storm aid charities and providing information on how to help out, while Rhodes was on a non-stop petulant rant about how the hurricane and every other bad thing under the sun is the fault of George W. Bush. The contrast between right-wing hate radio and high-minded progressive radio couldn’t have been more striking.
- More hurricane exploitation here.
- MSNBC is showing some fascinating video of the storm and storm surge plowing into — and then through — a building…from inside.
UPDATE: Michelle Malkin also has a recap of hurricane exploiters, and a rebuttal of some of those “the levees broke because Bush cut the money” arguments. Hint: the danger has been known since at least Camille, the decision to prepare for only up to a Category 3 hurricane was made decades ago on a cost-benefit analysis, and the levees that did break had just been rebuilt and upgraded. I had forgotten that — for a year or so, there were large cranes working on the 17th Street Canal near where the break is, visible from the West End area.
She also points to this accumulation of reports on the status in the Westbank area. The Oakwood Mall has been intentionally torched by looters, but the area seems to have fared well in terms of storm damage and flooding (relative to New Orleans, that is). I wonder how much more arson is going to happen once the waters begin to recede and the looters have more freedom of movement, in the period before the National Guard can spread out and restore order.