On Hurricane Katrina--for Marketplace Radio

I guess I was naive.

I thought that in the wake of Katrina's passing we'd see flotillas of helicopters, fleets of boats, and public health and public safety professionals from all over the country giving booster shots and restoring order within hours. I expected to see rapid, active, and aggressive disaster-recovery response from rescue assets prepositioned nearby but out of the reach of the hurricane.

After all, having a hurricane hit a city is nothing new. New Orleans's vulnerability as a bathtub waiting for the ocean is obvious. Louisiana is crucial to America's oil industry, and New Orleans is--was--an incredibly valuable touristic and cultural jewel.

But it appears that such was not the case. One hospital ship is scheduled to leave Baltimore tomorrow, rather than a week and a half ago.

The effect of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe on the broader economy is still a question mark. We don't know, yet, how much damage was done to the Gulf Coast oil sector. Refineries are shut. Drilling platforms are missing. And we don't know, yet, what other hurricanes will come roaring through.

Current estimates are that Hurricane Katrina has destroyed something like $100 billion of American wealth. Almost all of these losses will fall on the perhaps 1 and a half million refugees. Figure average wealth losses of $70,000 per affected household. Then figure it'll take several months to begin to rebuild and reknit economic activity in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. That's an extra $10,000 lost per household. Insurance won't cover more than a fraction.

When rebuilding starts--assuming that New Orleans can be pumped out in a reasonably short period of time, and that businesses are willing to risk rebuilding--the lower Mississippi should see lots of work to be done. That is, provided that the federal government, state governments, and businesses are willing to finance it.

If the Gulf Coast oil sector is in good shape, it won't be that many months before measured real GDP is about what it would have been had Katrina never come ashore.

But the GDP number won't count the $100 billion or so of destroyed wealth. The already-poor lower Mississippi Valley will be much poorer for a long time to come. People who were office professionals will be construction helpers. People who were middle class will be working class. People who were working class will be working poor--for seasons if not for years. And that's if the reconstruction effort goes well.

For broadcast September 1, 2005.

Comments

[Steve Talbert]

The problem with the Bush-Cheney regime is that they have no need to preplan because everything is God's Plan. They can only react once something happens. Basically they end up praying for thanks if they were spared or praying for what the meaning of the disaster was if they weren't. They have no other life view.

[Maynard Handley]

Isn't there a school of economists who claim that the market should have handled this; you know, the same crowd that tell us free enterprise will build lighthouses if allowed to?
If only there had been a marketplace for disaster craft, a way for individuals to bid on rescues. Clearly the solution is for the federal government to give a billion dollars to the Chicago Merc to have them develop such a market.

[nate]

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/

any thoughts on this?

[Nathan Campbell]

Has the response been so slow partially because so much of the military/national guard is deployed?

[a different chris]

> One hospital ship is scheduled to leave Baltimore tomorrow, rather than a week and a half ago.

What makes me sick with anger, absolutely furious, is crap like this. Ok, let's even (try not to throw up) accept "nobody thought the levees would break" for the sake of argument.

A CLASS FIVE hurricane was heading for GULF COAST landfall. They act like New Orleans was surrounded by the original wilderness, for god's sake. Anybody with a brain knew that if it missed New Orleans by turning east then Biloxi, et. al. was going to get hammered (as it did). If it missed to the west, well those ones usually do a number on Houston.

SOMETHING REALLY BAD WAS GOING TO FREAKING HAPPEN, it was just a matter of exactly where, and we were going to need that hospital ship there and for sure not in Baltimore.

Jesus help us what is the matter with the White House?

[ogged]

Well Lawrence, I'm convinced. Maybe next you'd like to debunk evolution.

[wcw]

Funny, lk, I know a lot of very successful, quite wealthy idiots in the workaday world.

Unlike our host, their work, and mine, and yours does not have to pass peer review.

A better class of critic, please.

[anne]

Dear Brad,

Thank you.

[mms]

As a New Orleans resident, whose heart breaks every time she turns on the TV, and a TU student who probably won't be graduating on time, I couldn't agree with you more. I can't believe how uncoordinated the relief efforts have been. We should be able to fix this. Moreover, the coldness that has been shown to the gulf coast by the likes of Dennis Hastert (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/01/AR2005090101482.html) or the Republican conneticuit newspaper The Waterbury ("Americans' hearts go out to the people in Katrina's path, but if the people of New Orleans and other low-lying areas insist on living in harm's way, they ought to accept responsibility for what happens to them and their property.") -- is this compassionate conservativism? Is this appropriate while they are still pulling bodies out of the water in the 9th Ward and St. Bernard's Parish?

Of course besides these isolated examples most people have been really amazing to the Hurricane victims. And this experience has certainly taught me humility before nature.

[CalDem]

Is the lack of rescue on purpose? Bush and Cheney are probably chortling about black Dem voters dying like flies. I don't think they care at all how many people die if it gains them an extra Senate seat.

["As You Know" Bob]

I'm a regular reader here, and just heard this broadcast on my local (Albany NY) public radio station.

My reactions were:
1) Gee, that's Brad DeLong - it's a small world;
and
2) Why oh why isn't he laying more blame on Bush?

But nicely done, thanks for a useful way to think about the crisis.

[Nicholas Mycroft]

I have not been this angry since the summer of 2002.

Smug incompetence.

Resources unavailable--why?

A competent, well-funded government --is such a thing desireable in these conditions? Will we see such a thing in our lifetimes?

Nicholas Mycroft

[Gene O'Grady]

Mr. Talbert,

Is there any evidence that the post-Christian thug Dick Cheney really thinks of anything as God's plan? I never had a sense that he has any philosophy beyond screw your neighbor before he can screw you.

[anne]

http://www.pbs.org/now/science/delta.html

September 6, 2002

The Mississippi River delta is disappearing. One of America's most vibrant and productive ecological regions is slipping into the Gulf of Mexico at an alarming rate. Every year, a chunk of land nearly as big as Manhattan crumbles and washes away. As it erodes, it not only threatens one of the country's most abundant fisheries and a vital home for wildlife, but it imperils the nation's energy supply. And, as the coast of Louisiana continues to slip away, tens of thousands of lives are at risk from devastating hurricanes. The crisis in the delta could reach catastrophic levels in the next few decades, with far-reaching environmental, human, and economic consequences.

[anne]

http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_delta.html

DANIEL ZWERDLING: Mike Foster has been fishing here in Southern Louisiana for as long as he can remember.

MIKE FOSTER: Hold it down, don't release it... Very good.

DANIEL ZWERDLING (ADDRESSING FOSTER): And then what do I do?

ZWERDLING: A few years ago, Foster realized that something strange was going on… take a look at his GPS unit. This gadget shows a recent map of the area, and it uses satellites to show exactly where we are on that map.

MIKE FOSTER: According to the GPS right here, we're in a channel with land on both sides and a big, huge land mass over here, and it's not there. You can see that.

ZWERDLING: It's just completely open water. And according to the GPS unit, we've just driven up on land.

The GPS actually shows us crashing right through the middle of an island.

ZWERDLING (ADDRESSING FOSTER): So there should basically be a huge island right here.

FOSTER: That's correct, Beaureguard Island.

DANIEL ZWERDLING: So what does that tell you?

FOSTER: That tells you Louisiana's losin' its coast.

ZWERDLING: Everybody who fishes here will tell you the same story: their world is washing away. We've all heard stories before about some beach eroding... But Louisiana's problem is dramatically different — Foster says it could be a national disaster. And when Mike Foster gets worried, powerful people get worried. Because foster's not just another fisherman... he's the governor of Louisiana. And Foster's calling on the whole country to help solve this crisis.

[phred]

I've spent years working on and helping coordinate search and rescue and forest fire-fighting operations (though admittedly never in hurricane relief). This thing just looks like the consummate clusterfuck. An earlier poster pointed out that navy rescue and hospital ships are late in getting started, but from what I can gather is that the fundamentals have been screwed up coming and going. There were no inland staging areas of resources, there was a complete failure to drop cargo nets of humanitarian food packets (MREs of lentils that say "a gift from the citizens of the United States" on them) and blivets (giant water balloons) of potable water. I mean, that stuff is basic - like the first things you secure for a big project fire. And, yes, this is a scale that I have never seen before. But the fundamentals: water, food, sanitation (I have no idea how you secure that helicopter - maybe empty dumpsters with toilet seats over the sides?) are the kind of thing that you start staging when bad shit looks imminent, not a day or two after the shit has hit the fan. I am so f*ing ashamed.

[maracucho]

I am an anti-war Vietnam veteran who saw officers lie about the war to help their military career. I opposed the Iraq war (not invading Afghanistan and capturing bin Laden) from the start. I saw the anti-war movement become extremely unpopular in the early 1970s because of the counter culture and gratuitous insults to ordinary Americans. I see it again today – NARAL, Jesse Jackson, Michael Moore and Moveon.org outrage 50% of Americans. If we want to stop the war and the insane killing, we must not exaggerate or insult people. George Bush is slightly more of the problem than Sen. Biden or the two Clintons, all of whom bow down to big oil and continue to support the war.

Please read, “Drowning New Orleans” in the 2001 Scientific American. I quote “New Orleans is a disaster waiting to happen. The city lies below sea level, in a bowl bordered by levees that fend off Lake Pontchartrain to the north and the Mississippi River to the south and west. And because of a damning confluence of factors, the city is sinking further, putting it at increasing flood risk after even minor storms.” New Orleans can’t be protected with levees 15 feet high or less. The Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale says “Storm surge generally greater than 18 ft above normal” for category V hurricanes. Katrina was only category IV, had weakened significantly and yet sent a storm surge >20 feet high into the Mississippi Coast. If it had hit New Orleans directly it would have gone over every levee. The levees have never been adequate for a category V hurricane. More will come; we must expect one to hit NO directly. This will cost billions of dollars to prepare for. It’s not just Bush, it’s the American people and Congress who approve billions for war but reject long term spending on infrastructure. No major Democrat has made that point. The Clintons have no basis to criticize Bush for curtailing levee maintenance, weakening an inadequate system.

The local government of NO and LA failed miserably. They ignored the Scientific American article. They had no plan for a super storm with failure of the levees, no pre-positioned supplies, boats, fresh water, or disaster drills for this eventuality. They were told late Saturday by LSU hurricane scientists that massive flooding and destruction was coming (damage was much less than predicted because the storm veered to the East). Any fool could have seen that sending relief workers and national guard into the city by cars and trucks would be impossible, that air and sea transport would be needed in huge amounts. Yet Gov Blanco said on Tuesday, “we can’t get in because the roads are impassable”. Martial law should have been declared Monday before looters took hospital generators and drugs. The National Guard should have been airlifted in.

Let’s help the relief effort, send money and resolve not to “shore up a sinking and stupid ship”- the current NO levees and the Iraq war. Note that a category V hurricane will go over the Galveston seawall and totally destroy Key West and other low lying Florida cities. There’s expensive work to be done; name-calling will hold us back.

[Brian]

Word has certainly come out that the privatization of federal emergency services started a long time ago. I'm not sure if this is an indictment against such an act or if it's yet another example of the imcompotence and malevolence of the Bush administration, or both, but I'd like some advocates of privatization of, well, everything to come out and analyze the situation. Whatever sort of transition troubles could occur and whatever failures the private sector may have, I have a hard time imagining that they'd be this bad. Otherwise, everyone except the most ridiculously hardcore libertarians would be for federalized emergency services.

So, anyone out there?

[Michael Cain]

"One hospital ship is scheduled to leave Baltimore tomorrow, rather than a week and a half ago."

Wait, wait, wait. We claim to be part of the reality-based community here. There are many questions that ought to be asked. For example, why, nearly four years after 9/11, does the evacuation of the 39th-largest metropolitan area in the country, the largest port in the US, one subject to foreseeable natural disasters, feel like we're making it up as we go? But please, let's stick to reality.

Nine days ago (August 23rd), less than the week-and-a-half you want, the last NWS bulletin of the day was in regard to tropical depression #12. Even if we had had perfect foreknowledge, to ask the hospital ship to sail then was to ask her crew to steam (two days later) into a category one hurricane in coastal waters. There's risks that you ask the Navy to take in defense of the country, and then there's just plain dumb.

If the evacuation to land-based facilities were proceeding in a reasonably-planned fashion, the hospital ship is unnecessary.

[J Thomas]

Maracucho, I believe you have not analysed this problem adequately, yet.

I agree that NO has been a disaster waiting to happen for a long time, and improving the levees was not a permanent fix. However, Clinton did fund things that could prevent some disasters and ameliorate others. Bush cut the funding and did nothing to replace it. That was not good. A lot of people are dying because of it.

It's true that the Republican Congress has a lot of responsibility for it too. And state and local governments in LA and MS. But the state governments are something for the citizens of LA and MS to deal with. Bush is our problem.

You say that Clinton etc are almost as bad. But no, Bush is the problem. Clinton etc have merely failed to solve the problem. Not the same thing at all.

We've been excruciatingly polite to Bush and the republican party for close to 5 years and this is what it's gotten us. This approach has not worked. It's time to call a turd a turd.

You say name-calling will hold us back. You're wrong. Bush is holding us back. Impeach Bush/Cheney. Then take it from there.

[MTC]

Why the surprise? J. Bradford DeLong's Axiom of Caution Toward Bush Administration Promises clearly applies:

"For all carefully thought out X

'X' would be good...if this Administration were not guaranteed to completely bollix up the implementation."

(apologies for the paraphrasing)

[abbistani]

>One hospital ship is scheduled to leave Baltimore tomorrow, rather than a week and a half ago.

Well, I wouldn't complain about the "one" part since there are only two in the whole navy (the other one is based on the West Coast). The thing that baffles me is that the Comfort sailed for New York on 9/12/2001, but this time it's taking them days to get going. Is this another sign of how far the military's been stretched by Iraq? Or are people just screwing up right and left?

[ilsm]

Privatization is corruption!!

The US privatized the military arsenals around 1947 when the National Security Act (euphemism for profit security) was passed; also airplane plants and many naval shipyards went over after WW II. We ended up with the military industrial complex by 1961.

The idea was more innovation from the "profit motive". We recieved the porcine military industrial complex.

Now we need a dozen huge aircraft carrier battle groups, a like number of amphibious ships with 800 marines each to do Nimitz' western pacific campaign over again.

All for the profits of the private shipyards, disguised as keeping the 12 largest navies in the world floating about.

The Army hires Boeing, in 2003 running short of airliner sales and losing fighter plane contracts, to rebuild the concept of a mechniazed brigade to fight the Soviets from the ground up. As if we need them......

The Air Force needs an F-22 but it took so long to get it half right the Soviet planes it was designed for never shoewed up. Ten extra years of fix profit development work paid over and over again with profit.

It is all corporate welfare. We see in Iraq the stuff is not suited for battling insurgents.

But everyone is making profit.

No!! Privatization is bull shit as long as there is only one customer and there are guys like Rumsfeld in government to preclude the contract officers from applying the law.

Privatization is more pork for the connected.

If we ever went to major war a War Production Board of civilian managers would have to fire the corrupt military industrial complex if we were not over run before we could egt aby weapons built.

[Dubblblind]

New Orleans, and most especially those left in the lurch because they were too poor to escape, does not represent the wealthy donor class, so why, exactly, would the Rethugs care if the disaster recovery effort is lacking?

[me]

"I agree that NO has been a disaster waiting to happen for a long time" - as is Norfolk, VA, Charleston, Galveston, Miami. A cat 5 is a cat5 no matter where it hits.

Remember that fema is now homeland security, the same incompetant jerks that have us standing in line at the airport for and hour and a half (but hey, let's lay off 500 of 1300 screenerws at Atlanta).

And finally there must not be enough rich republicans in New Orleans:

By Patrick Waldron
Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted Thursday, September 01, 2005

Lawmakers have to ask themselves if it’s worth sinking possibly billions of federal dollars into rebuilding New Orleans, a low-lying city which would remain a vulnerable hurricane target even after clean up, House Speaker Dennis Hastert said Wednesday.

“It doesn’t make sense to me,” said Hastert during an interview with the Daily Herald editorial board. “And it’s a question that certainly we should ask.”

[sluggo]

Don't blame just the Republicans for kowtowing to the political donor class. Democrats do it, too. The bankruptcy bill is Exhibit A.

It is true, though, that the Bush administration has rendered FEMA useless through political appointments and privatization attempts. Also, cutting Army Corps of Engineer projects in New Orleans adds more tragedy.

Bush can't stand on rubble with a bullhorn and launch an attack to avenge this one.

[masaccio]

bushco has a plan for everything: one size fits all:

1. Pray it doesn't happen.

2. Borrow money from the Chinese to fix the damage if it does.

3. Pay as much of the money as possible to their friends.

Repeat as necessary.

[Richard Green]

$100 billion in lost wealth. Perhaps we should start using NDP instead of GDP as a measure of economic activity. Depreciation is hard to measure, but so are a lot of other things in NIPA.

[maracucho]

a. It's fine to rant about impeaching Bush, but it won't happen.
b. The City of New Orleans knew that 112,000 households didn't have cars and therefore would have great difficulty evacuating the city. (see the Times-Picayune web site, nola.com). Knowing that the city would take a terrible hit from a category 5 hurricane, they should have had bottled water and MREs for 100,000 people for 5 days inside the bowl high and dry at the start of this and every hurricane season, and they should have secured the gun shops Monday evening when things were relatively calm.. I suppose that the majority of the looters didn't start out with bad intentions, just wanted food and drink. But law breaking is autocatalytic and most of the males have been drinking only alcohol- little wonder that they progressed to shooting, turning over ambulances, shooting at rescue helicopters, etc. I'd say impeach Nagin, Blanco, Bush and jail the head of Homeland Security who wasted billions on toys for police forces in the rural states- Ridge. There will be no impeachments, there is no Santa Claus..

The FEMA head says that food has been delivered to the convention center today – Mayor Nagin says that over 15,000 people are out of control there tonight, without food, shooting, raping and terrorizing and that the 88 police he sent over had to flee for their lives. Who do you believe? Is this Bolivia or what?
c. In a (sort of) democracy, people who vote get what they want. Most Americans so far have liked the idea of kicking Muslim butt and saying we’re number one.. All of those TV shots of black looters will have a profound effect on attitude to blacks, Latinos and Muslims, just like the TV images from Vietnam did.
There is serious work to be done, unless you want civil war

[Rejectomorph]

I'm astonished by the quote from the Connecticut newspaper in an earlier comment: "Americans' hearts go out to the people in Katrina's path, but if the people of New Orleans and other low-lying areas insist on living in harm's way, they ought to accept responsibility for what happens to them and their property."

This might be a good argument for not offering insurance subsidies and to the handful of rich folks who insist on building their costly houses in such places as the fire-and-landslide-prone hills around Los Angeles instead of living at higher densities on safer ground, but how does it apply to the ordinary citizens of the city which lies at the center of the nation's largest port?

Do the editors of this paper not grasp that people live where the jobs are? Do they not realize that the ports (the work of generations of investment by both government and private enterprise) which lie along the outlet of this nation's most important collection of waterways are essential to the economic well-being of the entire nation? Do they think we can afford to move such a vast collection of facilities to some other place, and change the patterns of transportation throughout the Mississippi-Missouri-Ohio basin just to accommodate such a move? Or do they believe that all these facilities can be run without human labor, or do they expect the workers to commute from some distant place, not subject to hurricanes? Connecticut, perhaps?

Maybe The Waterbury should editorialize in favor of national legislation that would shut down the ports, forbid private business from expanding operations in the delta, and eventually force them to remove what is already there. This would make as much sense as berating the citizens of New Orleans for daring to live in a place where they can find employment, but which is (like so many other places) subject to disasters. The nation is dependant on the work done in New Orleans and surrounding areas. That alone should be enough to justify national expenditure on projects to protect the city and the region.

How can people running a newspaper be so flabbergastingly ignorant of the way the world really works?

[Movie Guy]

The recovery won't be that fast, Brad.

In order for the businesses to return, local area construction workers and business employees have to have somewhere to live.

FEMA needs a ton of house trailers to provide any semblance of housing support for the workers if businesses try to start up after renovating their facilities.

Hell, the refinery workers need places to live away from their on site shift quarters. And they need food.

Cleaning up the toxic waste and film in Lake New Orleans will be no easy task. The sewage infrastructure has to be put back together first. And so on.

This will not go quickly in my judgment.

[W. Kiernan]

BDL: People who were office professionals will be construction helpers. People who were middle class will be working class. People who were working class will be working poor--for seasons if not for years.

Um, Brad, I can't believe I'm reading this, it is super dumb. You proposal protects citizens's current ranking in the economic classes, ain't that sweet. But under your scheme us experienced construction workers, working-class one and all, get shoved right off the bottom of the scale into the "working poor," to make room for the ex-professional class.

[Ummmm. A construction _helper_ is not a skilled and experienced construction worker. Not at all.]

[Kevin]

Remember, we don't endure natural disaters with the president we want, we have to endure them with the president we have.

I'm just hoping people remember this next year, so the dems can retake congress and we can start a good impeachment process.

[Eleanor]

I would be very interested to see the economic cost of abandoning the Port of Southern Louisiana, as Hastert suggests when he suggests not rebuilding New Orleans. A 15 barge river tow carries as much cargo as 900 trucks or 200 rail cars. Double those figures for the 30 barge tows that operate on the Lower Mississippi.Do we really want to move all that freight on land? Do we have the rail cars and trucks and fuel to do so? The big grain companies up here in Minnesota say land transport will increase the cost of American grain and may make the US less competitive compared to Brazil and China. Grain futures are dropping; and states like Iowa are worried. Another cost of the storm.

[arne]

There is an article in the NYT today; "Gulf Oil Operations Remain in Disarray". Also a great graphic shows the extensive network of platforms, rigs, underwater pipelines, and refineries in the gulf that were in the path of the hurricane.