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The Real Story of Katrina
EFL from the blog of a retired Newsday reporter

The narrative of Katrina needs wholesale revision, and mainstream news organizations are starting to work on it. There were not 200 murders at the Superdome; there appear to have been exactly zero. Local authorities did not lose control there or at the Convention Center. The more than 30,000 residents at emergency shelters during the first week of Katrina were tired, hungry, miserable, and without proper sanitary facilities — but were in no danger of dying. As for the rest of the city, help was rarely late, delayed, or inadequate. That’s the true story — and there are tens of thousands of rescued people who will testify to it.
This failure of the MSM will not be reported with the same drama or volume as the original slanders. The real story here is that the MSM acts as America's enemy not only abroad but at home as well. I thank Fred et al for Rantburg which is a healty antidote to the MSM poison.
Unlike befuddled city and state officials, the Coast Guard’s man in charge, Rear Admiral Bob Duncan, was literally on top of the situation: He flew in with the first crews, watched the first rescue himself, and spent the day in the air observing and directing operations. “People are most in need right after the storm goes through,” he explains. “When they feel comfortable going up on the roofs of their houses, we hope a big orange helicopter is waiting.”

Absent those early rescues, thousands would in fact have died, in line with the mayor’s prediction. With all communications knocked out, says Sheriff Valteau, “it was a reasonable estimation. . . . The mayor didn’t know what was going on in the field. It was impossible for him to know how many hundreds of citizens were out there saving people.”

It was impossible, as well, for the media, which were getting most of their information from City Hall. What audiences across the country saw as a breakdown of relief efforts was in fact a breakdown of media relations. Instead of marveling at the courage and endurance of rescuers, television spread lurid rumors of near-parodic depravity: gang violence (with AK-47s!), murder (200 slain, stacked, and frozen!), rape (women, children, babies!), sniping at helicopters, and rampage at the Superdome. Mainstream publications have since shown these reports to be false; since most of what the media did report was dead wrong, no one should be surprised that there was a parallel failure to report what went right.
And this isn't true just in NOLA.
On this score, the biggest lie — worse than the urban legends haunting the Superdome — was that help was slow to arrive. Rescuers say that on Monday, when the levees failed and water surged through the city, they saved thousands who were in danger of drowning — and that they simply could not have arrived any sooner. Not enough resources? Admiral Duncan says one of his biggest problems was that so many helicopters were operating, they risked crashing into one another.

As yet, there is no official hard count of how many were saved, nor has any central authority spoon-fed definitive numbers to the media. But clearly, success left a deep statistical footprint. The Washington Post, in a poll of survivors who relocated to Houston after staying through the storm, said 40 percent — roughly 40,000 to 50,000 people, if the sample is representative — reported that they had been rescued by the Coast Guard, Air National Guard units, or local police and firemen in boats.

The Coast Guard — a branch of the much-maligned Homeland Security Department — was far and away the main player. It claimed more than 24,000 rescues, and evacuated another 9,000 from hospitals and nursing homes. The Coasties got there first with the most — 16 search-and-rescue helicopters. Equipped with night-vision gear and hoists, these first units, joined by many more, ran 24 hours a day, every day, for a week. Preliminary reports showed that on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, the Coast Guard rescued 3,000 to 5,000 people from rooftops. The operation grew to hundreds of boats and 50 helicopters. Even barges were commandeered to load hundreds of survivors at a time who were stranded on broken levees.

According to Coast Guard Lt. Chris Huberty, who flew a Dolphin chopper on the night shift almost from the beginning, another reason relatively few lives were lost was that crews carefully selected who was brought to safety first. “We’d put a rescue swimmer down to determine who needed to be taken away,” he recalls. “I’d see three women, all healthy adults, and a guy in a wheelchair who was a diabetic; I’d say he needs insulin, let’s get him out of here first. The others might have to wait.” He says that by setting these priorities, the Coast Guard teams were able to get “a pretty good handle” on the stranded sick, injured, and elderly in just a couple of days.

Huberty deeply resents TV’s characterization of the black residents of New Orleans. “As many bad stories as you hear about looting, there were plenty of people sacrificing for others, regardless of their demographic. I can’t tell you how many times a man would stay behind an extra day or two on the roof and let his wife and kids go first. It broke my heart. We’d go to an apartment building and you’d see that someone was in charge, organizing the survivors. We’d tell him, ‘We can only take five,’ and they’d sort out the worst cases. It happened many times that the guy in charge was the last to leave.”


Posted by: Sholuper Hupineling3571 2006-03-04
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=144420