Reply #129: 2001, FEMA warned a hurricane at N.O. was one of 3 most likely disasters

[snot]

In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the
three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New
Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war.

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,372455,00.html

Also, from a post I believe at DU but I don't have the link, I kept the following:

FACTS: Bush was told about NO, he funded a study to confirm & then CUT $$

#1 Bush was told in 2001 that New Orleans was a National Issue
#2 Bush funded a $500K study to confrim this in 2004
#3 Bush cut New Orleans hurricane funds by 80%

Point #1
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In 2001, FEMA ranked a major hurricane strike on New Orleans as “among the three likeliest, most castastrophic disasters facing this country.” Bush slashed hurricane funding anyway. August 29, 2005 10:19

http://thinkprogress.org/2005/08/29/bush-knew

Point #2 - Study to confirm
----------------------------
IEM Team to Develop Catastrophic Hurricane Disaster Plan for New Orleans & Southeast Louisiana
June 3, 2004

IEM, Inc., the Baton Rouge-based emergency management and homeland security consultant, will lead the development of a catastrophic hurricane disaster plan for Southeast Louisiana and the City of New Orleans under a more than half a million dollar contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security/Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

In making the announcement today on behalf of teaming partners Dewberry, URS Corporation and James Lee Witt Associates, IEM Director of Homeland Security Wayne Thomas explained that the development of a base catastrophic hurricane disaster plan has urgency due to the recent start of the annual hurricane season which runs through November. National weather experts are predicting an above normal Atlantic hurricane season with six to eight hurricanes, of which three could be categorized as major.

The IEM team will complete a functional exercise on a catastrophic hurricane strike in Southeast Louisiana and use results to develop a response and recovery plan. A catastrophic event is one that can overwhelm State, local and private capabilities so quickly that communities could be devastated without Federal assistance and multi-agency planning and preparedness.

Thomas said that the greater New Orleans area is one of the nation’s most vulnerable locations for hurricane landfall.

(snip)

http://www.ieminc.com/Whats_New/Press_Releases/pressrel

Point #3 - Bush cuts NO funding by 80%
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In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness.

On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

Also that June, with the 2004 hurricane season starting, the Corps' project manager Al Naomi went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work that Washington was now unable to pay for. From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune:

"The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don't get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can't stay ahead of the settlement," he said. "The problem that we have isn't that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can't raise them."
snip

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051313