Michael Dirda has a very good “review”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/01/AR2005090101761.html of Paul Park’s _A Princess of Roumania_ in the Washington Post today (warning: some spoilers); for my earlier review of Park’s novel, see “here”:https://crookedtimber.org/2005/07/21/a-princess-of-roumania/. It’s really a lovely book – highly recommended. (Powells link here; Amazon (deprecated) here; all commission earnings go to charity).

When you’re right, you’re right. Radley Balko has noticed a hunger for good news, and this would seem to qualify:

Eighteen-year-old Jabbor Gibson jumped aboard the bus as it sat abandoned on a street in New Orleans and took control.

“I just took the bus and drove all the way here…seven hours straight,’ Gibson admitted. “I hadn’t ever drove a bus.”

The teen packed it full of complete strangers and drove to Houston. He beat thousands of evacuees slated to arrive there.

“I t’s better than being in New Orleans,” said fellow passenger Albert McClaud, “we want to be somewhere where we’re safe.”

Look at these pictures. I hope this kid gets a medal before Michael Brown does.

I spent the afternoon at the Houston Convention Center. According to people I spoke to, they were directing volunteers away from the Astrodome to the Convention Center. As I left, the Convention Center had a lot of volunteers, but it could use them.
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CNN reports, in “uncharacteristically blunt terms”:http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/03/katrina.chertoff/index.html on Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff’s efforts to exonerate his agency.

Defending the U.S. government’s response to Hurricane Katrina, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff argued Saturday that government planners did not predict such a disaster ever could occur.

But in fact, government officials, scientists and journalists have warned of such a scenario for years. … He called the disaster “breathtaking in its surprise.” But engineers say the levees preventing this below-sea-level city from being turned into a swamp were built to withstand only Category 3 hurricanes. And officials have warned for years that a Category 4 could cause the levees to fail.

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Shepard Smith and Geraldo Rivera “resist Sean Hannity’s efforts”:http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/09/02.html#a4763 to spin the scale of the disaster and, in particular, the suffering caused by clear, continuing failures of organization. Smith, especially, was working hard to stay calm and focused on relaying the conditions in front of him — he seemed like he wanted to reach through his camera, throttle Hannity and shout “Can’t you see what’s happening here?”

Like many people, I made a donation to the Red Cross – then took up Ted’s offer.

I do not regret this decision. And I am sure the money will help people in need.

But I thought some of it might help the people who are trapped and dying in New Orleans. Turns out, the Red Cross is not allowed into New Orleans (tip to Atrios):

“As the National Guard delivered food to the New Orleans convention center yesterday, American Red Cross officials said that federal emergency management authorities would not allow them to do the same.”

There are understandable security concerns, but the main reason seems to be the following: “The goal is to move people out of an uninhabitable city, and relief operations might keep them there.”

I am (once again) speechless – and literally trembling. How is it even conceivable that someone would think that relief operations would keep victims there – and that depriving them of emergency food and water would be the the extra little nudge that would convince them to get out?

1. There are still incentives available for donors to hurricane charities. Eszter has given away all of her books, but requests for CDs have been entirely manageable, and I’m very happy to keep burning them. Jane Galt has kindly offered to send everyone who donates $100 a homemade pound cake. For $250, she’ll write a blog post about anything you like, besides her personal life.

2. Amanda at Pandagon has a Texas-specific list of ways that people can help. According to this news report, both the Astrodome and the Convention Center are accepting volunteers. I’m going to find out.

3. I don’t think that there’s anyone in America (besides, maybe, the President) who’s satisfied with FEMA head Michael Brown right now. His previous experience was as an estate planning lawyer. He’s a GOP activist with no previous qualifications in disaster management. His last private-sector job, before becoming the head of FEMA, was as the commissioner for the now-defunct International Arabian Horse Association, where he was asked to resign from his position. I believe that a diarist at the Daily Kos realized this first:

The man responsible for directing federal relief operations in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, sharpened his emergency management skills as the “Judges and Stewards Commissioner” for the International Arabian Horses Association… a position from which he was forced to resign in the face of mounting litigation and financial disarray.

And the Boston Herald is backing it up (via Josh Marshall):

Brown was forced out of the position after a spate of lawsuits over alleged supervision failures.

“He was asked to resign,” Bill Pennington, president of the IAHA at the time, confirmed last night.

Soon after, Brown was invited to join the administration by his old Oklahoma college roommate Joseph Allbaugh, the previous head of FEMA until he quit in 2003 to work for the president’s re-election campaign.

I don’t know what to say. TheAdministration had absolutely no business putting this man in this position. But I’m completely unable to understand why Brown accepted this responsibility.

4. A few heartbreaking, gut-punching links from Making Light– John Scalzi’s Being Poor and Respectful of Otters’ Why The Aid Wasn’t There

Being in academia, I’ve been particularly curious to hear news about colleges and universities in the region. The Chronicle of Higher Education has set up a Katrina Update page. The Forum page has additional information.

Here’s a thought-provoking piece sent to me by Tim McGovern. Centralized assistance (properly organized) has its advantages, decentralized assistance has at least as much potential. I wonder whether this or some similar idea would be workable.

*The Catastrophe the Suburbs Were Invented For*
Timothy McGovern

More than half the US population lives in the suburbs, and I’d be willing to bet (though I don’t have the numbers to back it up) that more than half the US population lives within a day and half drive of New Orleans or Houston (New York City is 1300 miles from New Orleans, Chicago 925 miles, Denver 1200 from Houston)

There’s a long weekend coming up. You’ve got a day and a half to drive to a refugee shelter, pick up a family and bring them home to be your guest for a few weeks or a month.

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Alan Schussman takes a first look at the social ecology of the flooded areas of New Orleans:

The flood area has a population of about 380,000. Here’s how it compares to national numbers [from the 2000 census]:

	median HH income	% black	% poverty	% owns home	% private trans.	% public trans.
US	$ 41,994	12.1	12.3	66.2	87.9	4.7
Flood area	$ 29,854	66.8	26.9	50.6	79.0	13.0

These real numbers should be part of the discussion of why so many people didn’t get out of town. Jack Shafer gives it some thought, but it’s also informative to compare these numbers with national rates: In the flooded area of the city, poverty is more than twice as high as the national rate; median income is twelve thousand dollars lower; reliance on public transportation is nearly three times as high. Lower rates of owner-occupation mean a greater lack of insurance coverage …

Thanks to the many generous people who have made donations to various relief agencies in the past few days. If you were at all intrigued and inspired by the book offer – as some of you very kindly let me know that you were:) – please make a donation now and send me a note. I can take requests from five more people.

I’ll update this post and the earlier one when I have to end the offer. Thanks to Ted for inspiring this thread. And big thanks to so many of you for your generous gifts to relief agencies!

UPDATE (9/2/05 6:33pm CST): That was quick. I’m afraid I have to close the offer now. I will be shipping 35 books to people across the U.S. next week. Thank you so much everybody!

China Mieville catches “Innovative Emergency Management” “trying to rewrite history”:http://leninology.blogspot.com/2005/09/politics-of-weather-3-shyness-of.html.

bq. Remember my earlier point that disaster management in New Orleans had been privatised, the ‘catastrophic hurricane disaster plan’ having been handed over to Baton Rouge-based Innovative Emergency Management last year? Watching this nightmare unfold, I’ve been wondering why no fucking one is asking what exactly IEM got paid for. It’s turning out to be very hard to find out, for rather startling reasons. In my first post on this, I quoted their original press release:

bq. “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).”

bq. Don’t bother trying the link to that release on the original post. It doesn’t work any more. Let me explain. If you go here now, you’ll see IEM’s page of press releases. Below is what it looked like at 3am on Friday 2nd September, a few minutes ago. … See the highlighted word? There used to be another press release, between May and July, dated June 3, announcing that ‘IEM Team to Develop Catastrophic Hurricane Disaster Plan for New Orleans & Southeast Louisiana’. That’s right. The evidence that hurricane-management was privatised and handed over to IEM has been eradicated from the IEM website. It’s almost as if someone was trying to evade responsibility for incompetence that’s resulted in the deaths of thousands, or something.

It’s hard to find the words.

Please fill out this survey consisting of just one question.

Here is the question: What site first comes up when you launch your browser?

I’ll say more later today. At that point I’ll also open comments. Thanks!

UPDATE (9/3/05 10:45pm CST): Due to the number of “Other” responses and associated emailsI have received, it will take me a bit longer to tabulate the results than I had anticipated. I will be posting a follow-up note to this survey sometime this weekend. Thanks to the 660 people who have already taken it. The survey will remain open for up to 240 more respondents.

UPDATE (9/5/05 11:40am CST): I have now closed the survey. Thanks to the 784 people who participated. Stay tuned for a summary and discussion of responses.

Via “Radley Balko”:http://www.theagitator.com/, a “rather nice BBC article”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4200056.stm about the crappy statistics behind the claim that the British are engaging in more binge drinking.