posted September 27, 2005 05:15 PM            

BATON ROUGE, La. — Maj. Ed Bush recalled how he stood in the bed of a pickup truck in the days after Hurricane Katrina, struggling to help the crowd outside the Louisiana Superdome separate fact from fiction. Armed only with a megaphone and scant information, he might have been shouting into, well, a hurricane.

The National Guard spokesman's accounts about rescue efforts, water supplies and first aid all but disappeared amid the roar of a 24-hour rumor mill at New Orleans' main evacuation shelter. Then a frenzied media recycled and amplified many of the unverified reports.

"It just morphed into this mythical place where the most unthinkable deeds were being done," Bush said Monday of the Superdome.

His assessment is one of several in recent days to conclude that newspapers and television exaggerated criminal behavior in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, particularly at the overcrowded Superdome and Convention Center.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune on Monday described inflated body counts, unverified "rapes," and unconfirmed sniper attacks as among examples of "scores of myths about the dome and Convention Center treated as fact by evacuees, the media and even some of New Orleans' top officials."

Indeed, Mayor C. Ray Nagin told a national television audience on "Oprah" three weeks ago of people "in that frickin' Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people."

Journalists and officials who have reviewed the Katrina disaster blamed the inaccurate reporting in large measure on the breakdown of telephone service, which prevented dissemination of accurate reports to those most in need of the information. Race may have also played a factor.

The wild rumors filled the vacuum and seemed to gain credence with each retelling — that an infant's body had been found in a trash can, that sharks from Lake Pontchartrain were swimming through the business district, that hundreds of bodies had been stacked in the Superdome basement.

"It doesn't take anything to start a rumor around here," Louisiana National Guard 2nd Lt. Lance Cagnolatti said at the height of the Superdome relief effort. "There's 20,000 people in here. Think when you were in high school. You whisper something in someone's ear. By the end of the day, everyone in school knows the rumor — and the rumor isn't the same thing it was when you started it."

Follow-up reporting has discredited reports of a 7-year-old being raped and murdered at the Superdome, roving bands of armed gang members attacking the helpless, and dozens of bodies being shoved into a freezer at the Convention Center.

Hyperbolic reporting spread through much of the media.

Fox News, a day before the major evacuation of the Superdome began, issued an "alert" as talk show host Alan Colmes reiterated reports of "robberies, rapes, carjackings, riots and murder. Violent gangs are roaming the streets at night, hidden by the cover of darkness."

The Los Angeles Times adopted a breathless tone the next day in its lead news story, reporting that National Guard troops "took positions on rooftops, scanning for snipers and armed mobs as seething crowds of refugees milled below, desperate to flee. Gunfire crackled in the distance."

The New York Times repeated some of the reports of violence and unrest, but the newspaper usually was more careful to note that the information could not be verified.

The tabloid Ottawa Sun reported unverified accounts of "a man seeking help gunned down by a National Guard soldier" and "a young man run down and then shot by a New Orleans police officer."

London's Evening Standard invoked the future-world fantasy film "Mad Max" to describe the scene and threw in a "Lord of the Flies" allusion for good measure.

Televised images and photographs affirmed the widespread devastation in one of America's most celebrated cities.

"I don't think you can overstate how big of a disaster New Orleans is," said Kelly McBride, ethics group leader at the Poynter Institute, a Florida school for professional journalists. "But you can imprecisely state the nature of the disaster. … Then you draw attention away from the real story, the magnitude of the destruction, and you kind of undermine the media's credibility."

Times-Picayune Editor Jim Amoss cited telephone breakdowns as a primary cause of reporting errors, but said the fact that most evacuees were poor African Americans also played a part.

"If the dome and Convention Center had harbored large numbers of middle class white people," Amoss said, "it would not have been a fertile ground for this kind of rumor-mongering."

Some of the hesitation that journalists might have had about using the more sordid reports from the evacuation centers probably fell away when New Orleans' top officials seemed to confirm the accounts.

Nagin and Police Chief Eddie Compass appeared on "Oprah" a few days after trouble at the Superdome had peaked.

Compass told of "the little babies getting raped" at the Superdome. And Nagin made his claim about hooligans raping and killing.

State officials this week said their counts of the dead at the city's two largest evacuation points fell far short of early rumors and news reports. Ten bodies were recovered from the Superdome and four from the Convention Center, said Bob Johannessen, spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals.

(National Guard officials put the body count at the Superdome at six, saying the other four bodies came from the area around the stadium.)

Of the 841 recorded hurricane-related deaths in Louisiana, four are identified as gunshot victims, Johannessen said. One victim was found in the Superdome but was believed to have been brought there, and one was found at the Convention Center, he added.

Relief workers said that while the media hyped criminal activity, plenty of real suffering did occur at the Katrina relief centers.

"The hurricane had just passed, you had massive trauma to the city," said Lt. Col. Pete Schneider of the Louisiana National Guard.

"No air conditioning, no sewage … it was not a nice place to be. All those people just in there, they were frustrated, they were hot. Out of all that chaos, all of these rumors start flying."

Louisiana National Guard Col. Thomas Beron, who headed security at the Superdome, said that for every complaint, "49 other people said, 'Thank you, God bless you.' "

The media inaccuracies had consequences in the disaster zone.

Bush, of the National Guard, said that reports of corpses at the Superdome filtered back to the facility via AM radio, undermining his struggle to keep morale up and maintain order.

"We had to convince people this was still the best place to be," Bush said. "What I saw in the Superdome was just tremendous amounts of people helping people."

But, Bush said, those stories received scant attention in newspapers or on television.

posted September 27, 2005 05:17 PM            

By MICHELLE ROBERTS
Associated Press Writer

NEW ORLEANS

On Sept. 1, with desperate Hurricane Katrina evacuees crammed into the convention center, Police Chief Eddie Compass reported: "We have individuals who are getting raped; we have individuals who are getting beaten."

Five days later, he told Oprah Winfrey that babies were being raped. On the same show, Mayor Ray Nagin warned: "They have people standing out there, have been in that frickin' Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people."

The ugliest reports _ children with slit throats, women dragged off and raped, corpses piling up in the basement _ soon became a searing image of post-Katrina New Orleans.

The stories were told by residents trapped inside the Superdome and convention center and were repeated by public officials. Many news organizations, including The Associated Press, carried the witness accounts and official pronouncements, and in some cases later repeated the claims as fact, without attribution.

But now, a month after the chaos subsided, police are re-examining the reports and finding that many of them have little or no basis in fact.

They have no official reports of rape and no eyewitnesses to sexual assault. The state Department of Health and Hospitals counted 10 dead at the Superdome and four at the convention center. Only two of those are believed to have been murdered.

One of those victims _ found at the Superdome _ appears to have been killed elsewhere before being brought to the stadium, said Bob Johannessen, the agency spokesman.

"It was a chaotic time for the city. Now that we've had a chance to reflect back on that situation, we're able to say right now that things were not the way they appeared," said police Capt. Marlon Defillo.

Sally Forman, a spokeswoman for Nagin, said the mayor was relying on others for his information about conditions at the evacuation sites. "He was listening to officials, trusting that information they were providing was accurate," she said.

To be sure, conditions at both sites were chaotic. Water was rising around the Superdome, home to 20,000 evacuees. Toilets were backing up, garbage was rotting, fights were breaking out. Food was in short supply at the convention center, where about 19,000 people took shelter from the rising waters. The temperature was climbing. The elderly and very young were desperate for food, water and medicine.

Police said they saw muzzle flashes at the convention center, and a National Guard member was shot in the leg when an evacuee tried to take his gun.

A week after the floodwaters poured into the city, an Arkansas National Guardsman told The Times-Picayune of New Orleans that soldiers had discovered 30 to 40 bodies inside a freezer in the convention center's food area. Guardsman Mikel Brooks told the newspaper that some of the dead appeared to have met violent ends, including "a 7-year-old with her throat cut."

When the convention center was swept, however, no such pile of bodies was found.

Lt. Col. Jacques Thibodeaux of the Louisiana National Guard said reports of violence at the Superdome and the convention center were overblown. He was head of security at the Superdome and led the 1,000 military police and infantrymen who went in to secure the center on Sept. 2.

"The incidents were highly exaggerated" _ the result of fear and hopelessness, he said. "For the amount of the people in the situation, it was a very stable environment."

Thibodeaux said his guard unit received no reports of rape.

Bill Waldron, a homicide detective from Florida in New Orleans for a murder trial, was stuck in the convention center until Sept. 1. He said he saw a couple of fights between young men, but "no murders, no rapes." He said that he did see people dying, but that those deaths were most likely a result of the heat and lack of water.

"People were wanting just some type of authority to come in and say, `Hey, this is what's going to happen,'" Waldron said. "People were scared."

New Orleans District Attorney Eddie Jordan said officials at the morgue in St. Gabriel have identified four apparent homicide victims from the city. All were shot and all were adults. Police arrested one person on suspicion of attempted sexual assault but received no official reports of rape.

Judy Benitez, executive director of the Louisiana Foundation Against Sexual Assault, cautioned that it might be too soon to say whether there really were rapes at the evacuation sites. Because the evacuees and any perpetrators have been scattered across the country by Katrina, and now Hurricane Rita, victims may come forward later, she said.

"It is extremely difficult to get good statistics about rape under normal circumstances, and these are certainly not normal circumstances," she said.

Bill Ellis, a folklorist at Pennsylvania State University, said rumors in an environment like that at the evacuation centers are to be expected, given the frightening circumstances and paucity of authoritative information.

"Rumors become improvised news. You become your own anchorman," he said.

The chaos also seemed to affect some reporters and editors, said Kelly McBride, who teaches ethics to journalists at the Poynter Institute, a journalism research and education center in St. Petersburg, Fla.

"You get so hung up as a reporter on what the big picture is that you use generalizations that become untrue," McBride said.

posted September 28, 2005 01:45 PM            

Not only is this article from the LA Times, but it also notes NY Times being one of the sources careful to note that the information could not be verified. I get from this that liberal media are still interested in reporting with integrity.

posted September 28, 2005 05:59 PM            

There were errors all around and there are MANY to blame.

Alot of people are not aware of the politics that take place in Emergency Response. I wasn't even aware of all the details until I started this position. I am on the rapid response / emergency response team for the county health department (the whole bioterrorism unit is). We have day long sessions details all the hoops we would have to go through should we have an emergency.

Arizona is a great state though in that our Governor (like Texas and Mississippi - almost all fo the East Coast and California) is in tuned with what the local municipalities emergency reponse plans are and attend our meetings. Still, should we have a huge outbreak or disaster here, we'd have to go through our director, to the board, to the state, to the feds.

In any event you have people that WANT to be in front of the camera talking about the plight of their constituents.

We just had an intense webcast today that talked about the exercises and drills we run (sometimes involving thousands of people that volunteer to act like victims). Even in our drills we have problems and if there are problems in a drill then you know they will occur in real life.

What everyone is forgetting is that this was a Natural Disaster- unfortunately they happen. Look at the Tsunami and how many people were killed from that tragedy. It just seems Americans always want someone to blame. No one can be 100% safe, if that were true towns wouldn't be obliterated by tornadoes, people wouldn't die in wildfires..etc...

posted September 29, 2005 04:48 PM            

Let's be real here. There are extremely vocal people on the left, once again, using something to blame Bush.

I don't know, I think it's getting pretty old. It is one thing to hate the man because of his policies or even hate the war, but the constant whining and deeming the enture Bush family a bunch of demons or accusing them of being evil is incredibly tiresome.

There are some threads that I no longer post on because I realize it will end up being one big "I hate Bush" lovefest LOL... I am waiting for the California wildfires to be blamed on some Republican conspiracy headed by the Bush family.

posted November 10, 2005 05:30 PM              

quote:

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I am waiting for the California wildfires to be blamed on some Republican conspiracy headed by the Bush family.-pidaua

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posted November 11, 2005 05:10 PM            

quote:

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WHo gives a flying feck????

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Just everyone who doesn't agree with this administration, that's all.

posted November 12, 2005 05:14 PM              

the second statistician jumped up with his gun and fired a shot 1 foot below the duck....

posted March 05, 2006 07:51 PM            

Blanco Refused To Act...
Governor’s Indecision Cost Precious Time

posted March 05, 2006 08:26 PM              

*******************************************

Bush was warned of hurricane

Washington: Experts warned President Bush before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees, put lives at risk in the Superdome in New Orleans and overwhelm rescuers, newly obtained videos of confidential briefings reveal.

The footage shows that Mr Bush did not ask a single question during the final briefing before Katrina struck on August 29, though he assured state officials: “We are fully prepared.”

But a hurricane expert had voiced “grave concerns” about the levees and then Michael Brown, the head of Federal Emergency Management Agency, told Mr Bush that he feared there were too few disaster teams to help evacuees at the Superdome.

posted March 05, 2006 10:50 PM              

By Lara Jakes Jordan, Associated Press | February 10, 2006

WASHINGTON -- Twenty-eight government agencies, from local Louisiana parishes to the White House, reported that New Orleans's levees were breached on Aug. 29, the day Hurricane Katrina roared ashore, according to documents released yesterday.
Article Tools

A timeline of e-mail messages, situation updates, and weather reports, pieced together by Senate Democrats, indicates that the Bush administration knew as early as 8:30 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time about levee failures that would lead to massive flooding of the city and its surrounding counties, or parishes.

Senate Democrats said the documents raise questions about whether the government moved quickly enough to rescue storm victims once they realized the levees had broken.

A White House spokesman, Trent Duffy, said President Bush and his top aides were fully aware of the massive flooding and less concerned about whether it had been caused by levee breaches, overtopped levees, or failed pumps. All three were being reported at the time.

''We knew there was flooding, and that's why the number one effort in those early hours was on search and rescue and saving life and limb," Duffy said.

Shortly after the disaster, Bush said, ''I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." He later said his comment had been meant to suggest that there had been a false sense of relief that the levees had held.

The Bush administration has said it knew definitively early Tuesday, the day after the storm, that the levees had been breached.

Their information, they said, was based on an Army Corps of Engineers assessment.

Democrats said the documents showed there was little excuse for the federal response.

''The first communication came at 8:30 a.m.," said Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. ''So it is inexplicable to me how those responsible for the federal response could have woken up Tuesday morning unaware of this obviously catastrophic situation."

The first internal White House communication about levee failures was issued at 11:13 a.m. on Aug. 29 in a ''Katrina Spot Report" that was issued by the Homeland Security Council. ''Flooding is significant throughout the region and a levee in New Orleans has reportedly been breached, sending 6-8 feet of water throughout the 9th ward area of the city," the internal report said.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/02/10/28_agencies_reported_levee_woes_day_katrina_hit_documents_show/

posted March 06, 2006 12:24 AM            

How is it that you find this lying story but didn't find the retraction the paper printed after they got their @sses ripped for telling the lie?

Second Petron, what is it you don't understand about the sovereignty of the states? What don't you understand about the President's lack of Constitutional authority to intervene within states without the approval or request of the chief executive of the state...the Governor? The democrats well know the President cannot send federal troops into a state without the Governors request or approval...except for insurrections by the state or possibly to protect federal installations within a state.

You democrats need to get over it. Blanco and Nagin both screwed the pooch royally. Blanco refused to federalize the relief effort and blocked both FEMA and the military until days after Katrina had come and gone. This going on while Bush was repeatedly asking her to do so...and also to declare a Mandatory Evacuation of New Orleans....and also while there WAS time to do so.

Nagin set on his @ss with more than 500 city buses and school buses sitting in a compound and not one of them got fired up to evacuate residents from New Orleans. Nagin didn't even follow the cities own disaster plan. Instead Nagin was screeching and screaming to send Greyhound buses to evacuate the city...as if the federal government could order a private company to do so...it can't.

It was the state and city responsibility to provide food, shelter and water as well as security for the sites within New Orleans designated as emergency shelters. That didn't get done either. FEMA, even if Blanco had signed on to the federal relief effort is not a first responder agency, does not have rescue units, does not have security forces and is not responsible for stocking city designated shelters with food and water BEFORE a natural disaster strikes.

But Blanco did not sign that executive order giving the federal government authority to send in federal troops and FEMA on the day Katrina struck...Monday, August 29 about 6:45am, nor did she sign it on Tues, nor on Wed but finally on Thursday, September 1st, Blanco got off her incompetent @ss, got off the interview circuit and signed the executive order.

Both Blanco and Nagin are incompetent boobs...both of them. The lying leftist press seems to think they can take the heat off these 2 incompetent democrats by blaming Bush for the response to Katrina but that bullsh*t is falling apart.

posted March 06, 2006 01:13 PM            

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin is playing the race card in his bid for re-election, reminding black audiences that his white opponents "don't look like us."

Appearing Saturday before the NAACP's Family & Technology Center in Houston, Nagin noted that 23 candidates had entered the mayoral fray before the registration deadline last week.

"Very few of them look like us," he told the audience of about 200, whom the Houston Chronicle described as "almost totally black."

Nagin was in Houston to encourage displaced Katrina evacuees to cast their absentee ballots for him.

Some refugees, however, made it clear they still harbor resentments for the way he botched evacuation efforts.
"You waited until it was too late. The mandatory evacuation was too late and there were people who drowned," said evacuee Eugene Jefferson, who the Chronicle described as "emotional and tearful."

"Now you want us to vote for you?" Jefferson huffed.

Among the candidates opposing Nagin is Louisiana Lt. Governor Mitch Landrieu, brother of Sen. Mary Landrieu - who once threatened to punch anyone who criticized the performance of local officials in the Katrina disaster.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/3/6/102645.shtml?s=ic

*Make that dimocrat Senator Mary Landrieu.

posted March 06, 2006 08:35 PM              

******

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
August 27, 2005

Statement on Federal Emergency Assistance for Louisiana

The President today declared an emergency exists in the State of Louisiana

The President's action authorizes the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to coordinate all disaster relief efforts which have the purpose of alleviating the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency on the local population, and to provide appropriate assistance for required emergency measures

Specifically, FEMA is authorized to identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/08/20050827-1.html

******

August 28, 2005
Mandatory Evacuation Ordered for New Orleans as Storm Nears
By CHRISTINE HAUSER
and THOMAS J. LUECK

Threatened with a potential catastrophe, the mayor of New Orleans ordered people in the city to evacuate today as Hurricane Katrina gained strength. President Bush has already declared an emergency for Louisiana and Mississippi, which along with other parts of the northern Gulf coast states lie in the direction of the hurricane.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/28/national/29k atrinacnd.html?adxnnl=0&adxnnlx=1125345182-bdMePcE/ywIIqmedhjvUng&pagewanted=print

*****
at fema it says emergency was declared aug. 27...the day before evacuations were ordered...

.a disaster was declared aug 29 the day katrina hit......

http://www.fema.gov/news/disasters_state.fema?id=22

*****

Posted 8/31/2005 10:03 PM

Pentagon to send 10,000 National Guard troops

By Dave Moniz, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon said Wednesday that it will add 10,000 National Guard soldiers from around the country to areas of Louisiana and Mississippi ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. A combination of troop callups and recruiting problems has left the two states with fewer of their own troops to provide aid.

Fighting two wars and doing hurricane relief could cripple the part-time military, a government official said.

More than 5,900 Guard soldiers from the two states, about a third of the total, are deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. The states' governors need more soldiers to halt looting, rescue storm victims and provide aid and comfort to residents.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-08-31-guard-katrina_x.htm

******

Guardsmen Greeted With Applause, Anger
Sep 02 2:54 PM US/Eastern
By ALLEN G. BREED
Associated Press Writer

NEW ORLEANS

posted March 10, 2006 12:18 PM            

Just before midnight on August 26, three days before Katrina was to make landfall, Kathleen Blanco received a phone call from George Bush. The president had been through a series of briefings from Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin and knew the potential dangers to New Orleans and the surrounding area from a storm the size of Katrina. Now he was attempting to convince the Governor of Louisiana that she needed to take immediate action. His pleas fell on deaf ears. It seemed that the Governor was more concerned with the legalities of accepting federal assistance, and the appearance that her office could not handle the emergency.

Despite Governor Blanco’s reluctance to coordinate the state’s efforts with federal assistance, President Bush declared a state of emergency for Louisiana two full days before Katrina hit the Louisiana coast. The move allowed FEMA to begin staging relief supplies for immediate distribution in New Orleans once the storm had passed. The president's emergency declaration also allowed FEMA to coordinate all disaster relief efforts and to provide appropriate assistance in a number of Louisiana parishes. All that was left to do was wait for Kathleen Blanco to request Federal assistance. Under the Emergency Management Assistance Compact, which was revised after 9/11, the Federal Government and FEMA are not allowed to interfere with local operations unless they are authorized by state and local leaders.

It absolutely counters YOUR posting that Bush did NOTHING. Yet, the time-line (and evidence) proves that Gov Blanco DID receive a call from Bush 2.5 days BEFORE the Hurricane HIT. In fact it was BUSH that declared a State of Emergency TWO FULL DAYS before the Hurricane.