A.D. (After The Deluge) is a serialized webcomic about what it was like in the days leading up to, during & immediately after the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans. The story is true, all dialogue taken from direct quotes. An ongoing project with updates monthly (scheduled to run from Dec 06 - Dec 07), the most recent chapter takes place right at the end of the storm, prior to the collapse of the levees, but to get the full effect,
read from the very beginning. For those who want to know more about the project, there's an
FAQ.
posted by jonson
on Sep 5, 2007 -
20 comments
Last Chance. "It took the Mississippi River 6,000 years to build the Louisiana coast. It took man (and natural disasters) 75 years to destroy it. Experts agree we have 10 years to act before the problem is too big to solve."
[Via First Draft.]
posted by homunculus
on Mar 5, 2007 -
19 comments
Stress building in New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina anniversary could spark more problems Like many other New Orleanians nearly a year after Hurricane Katrina, John McCusker was experiencing the
overwhelming
stress of rebuilding his life. McCusker, a
photographer who was part of The Times-Picayune's 2006 Pulitzer Prize-winning staff(reg. required, but worth it. Trust me.), was seen driving wildly through the city Tuesday, attracting the attention of police. He
eventually
was arrested, but not before he was subdued with a Taser and an officer fired twice at his vehicle. During the melee,
he begged police to kill him. For some, it's still
Katrina every day.
posted by ColdChef
on Aug 10, 2006 -
141 comments
Flash flood! A New Orleans Times Picayune flash animation of exactly how, and where, and when the city of New Orleans and surrounding areas flooded during Hurricane Katrina. Here's the
accompanying article. Even as a local, I had no idea how weak the levee systems were. And apparently
still are. Here's some
more info from a
local grassroots group fighting for better levee protection.
posted by ab3
on May 18, 2006 -
18 comments
Mascots helping Mascots High schools across America have witnessed the devastation brought about by several recent natural disasters, such as Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. An outpouring of sympathy and concern, and a desire to help, have come forth from high schools wanting to assist those in need. To enable schools to help other schools, the National Federation of State High School Associations has initiated a fundraising program called the Mascot Adoption Program.
posted by ColdChef
on Mar 13, 2006 -
3 comments
Tons of British Food for Katrina Victims to be Incinerated (link to Mirror article)
More
red tape embarrassment for the
Katrina relief effort. This time, tons of food donated by the UK is set to be incinerated rather than delivered to hungry evacuees. The FDA recalled the food rations, which had been loaded onto trucks and sent out for distribution, because they had been "condemned as unfit for human consumption". Never mind the glaring fact that these are the same food rations being eaten by British soldiers in Iraq right now.
posted by fenriq
on Sep 20, 2005 -
82 comments
Katrina Ushers in Return of Big Government We have a larger govt now (people working for the govt) than we have ever had. We have now the Patriot Act, overseeing much of our activities. We have intelligence agencies doing lord knows what domestically, and security checks etc. Now we learn that Big govt is back? Where had it been before the storm?
posted by Postroad
on Sep 15, 2005 -
43 comments
After The Flood Surprising stories from survivors in New Orleans. We give people who were in the storm more time than daily news coverage can to tell their stories and talk about what they're thinking. This leads to a number of ideas that haven't made it into the regular news coverage. The most recent episode of
This American Life is now up on their website--
This American Life is one of the best programs on public radio and this was one of their best episodes ever. It is well worth a listen.
posted by y2karl
on Sep 13, 2005 -
24 comments
Vancouver's elite Urban SAR team has been and returned, having helped out in New Orleans in the way they were trained. There's more help on the way from Canada, in the form of
Operation Unison; this includes a
a Canadian Navy flotilla consisting of the destroyer
HMCS Athabaskan, the frigates
HMCS Toronto and
HMCS Ville de Quebec and the Canadian Coast Guard boat tender
HMCS Sir William Alexander. The flotilla carries around 1000 servicepeople, many of them medical and rescue specialists, in addition to engineering and construction crews. Additionally,
forty Canadian navy clearance divers will be accompanying the relief force. Despite recent diplomatic spats between our two nations (notably over Iraq, cattle and softwood lumber) we remain good neighbours. After
U.S. Ambassador to Canada Paul Cellucci's departure Canada was awaiting an even worse adversary in replacement
Ambassador Wilkins. And yet, despite Wilkin's lack of knowledge of things Canadian,
he appears to have a significantly greater measure of humility than dick-swinging Cellucci ever did. In any case, as "irrelevant and disappointing" as Canada is to
the likes of Bill O'Reilly, we're on our way to help our friends to the south.
posted by illiad
on Sep 8, 2005 -
51 comments
Losing New Orleans: Four months before it happened, I described for a New York editor, in detail and with stunning accuracy, the tragedy that is now unfolding in New Orleans.
In April, I e-mailed the editor my proposal. Two weeks later, she sent her response.
As much as I hate saying this,” she wrote, “the only way for this book to actually work is if New Orleans had already sunk.”
I’d like to know what “transportation security” meant to Mr. Hutchinson, if it did not include the concept of evacuating a stricken city, or protecting its great port, or safeguarding the third of our nation’s fuel that enters by way of New Orleans?
If I, a reporter in Little Rock, with nothing more than Internet access, a car and a telephone, could predict, almost hour-by-hour, the horror that Katrina would unleash, what were Hutchinson and his cronies at Homeland Security doing with all the assets at their disposal and nearly $40 billion in funding?
posted by thisisdrew
on Sep 8, 2005 -
71 comments
Beyond Incompetence Reading the news after the Katrina Hurricane and the lack-of-response disaster, a pattern began to emerge. Mainstream media compilation - Collective Bellaciao
via xymphora, which has several other uniquely critical posts on Katrina
posted by ism
on Sep 7, 2005 -
29 comments
The New York Times is offering Katrina reporters trauma counselling. Reporters covering warzones in Iraq, Chechnya and the Sudan were not offered near-mandatory trauma counselling by the newspaper of record.
Journalists in Lousiana and the rest of the Gulf Coast were.
"In fact, the circumstances were so shocking to reporters that according to one staff member, The New York Times e-mailed information about dealing with trauma to reporters in the field, outlining warning signs; employee-assistance counselors also placed calls to reporters."
posted by huskerdont
on Sep 7, 2005 -
35 comments
Weathering the Storm: Lessons in Hurricane Risk Reduction from Cuba [pdf] Oxfam America report described Cuba's community-based response system in April 2004, five months before category 5 hurricane Ivan tore across the island but resulted in zero deaths. From
Medicc Review: "Of those evacuated, fully 78%...were sheltered in the homes of family, friends or neighbors. 8,026 tourists were transferred to safe areas. 359,644 boarding school students were transferred to their homes. 898,160 farm animals in vulnerable areas were moved to safer ground." The International Red Cross had
similar praise for Cuba's planning after Hurricane Michelle in 2001: " The contrast between events in Cuba and earlier disasters, such as Hurricanes Mitch and Georges in 1998 and the floods in Venezuela in 1999, is enormous."
posted by mediareport
on Sep 6, 2005 -
34 comments
BEHIND THE CURTAIN.... George Bush's photo-op tour of New Orleans yesterday has apparently driven Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu over the edge. Today she blasted FEMA for its feeble response to Hurricane Katrina and Bush for his phony, stage managed promises of action:
posted by Postroad
on Sep 5, 2005 -
133 comments
Last September, a Category 5 hurricane battered the small island of Cuba with 160-mile-per-hour winds. More than 1.5 million Cubans were evacuated to higher ground ahead of the storm. Although the hurricane destroyed 20,000 houses, no one died. What is Cuban President Fidel Castro's secret? According to Dr. Nelson Valdes, a sociology professor at the University of New Mexico, and specialist in Latin America, "the whole civil defense is embedded in the community to begin with. People know ahead of time where they are to go. Cuba's leaders go on TV and take charge," said Valdes... "Merely sticking people in a stadium is unthinkable.. Shelters all have medical personnel, from the neighborhood. They have family doctors in Cuba, who evacuate together with the neighborhood, and already know, for example, who needs insulin." They also evacuate animals and veterinarians, TV sets and refrigerators, "so that people aren't reluctant to leave because people might steal their stuff," Valdes observed.
The Two Americas. See also
A Nation's Castaways,
'To Me, It Just Seems Like Black People Are Marked' &
White Man's Burden
posted by y2karl
on Sep 4, 2005 -
69 comments
A
cached google page says
Loyola thought the city of New Orleans contracted with private companies for hurricane evacuation. Did I miss something? Where we these mysterious buses? From
here and
here.
posted by nospecialfx
on Sep 4, 2005 -
15 comments
The Matrix shatters before the eyes of the nation (sorry, WMP link) -- and on Fox News! For those old enough to remember, it's so significant that Geraldo Rivera says of conditions in the New Orleans Convention Center, "it's like Willowbrook in there." (Rivera became famous in 1972 by
exposing the horrendous conditions in a home for the mentally retarded called Willowbrook; finally, after decades of degrading himself, he remembers what his job is.) And Slate's Jack Shafer on "
the rebellion of the talking heads" -- the refusal of reporters on the ground in New Orleans to regurgitate the official spin. [via
TalkLeft]
posted by digaman
on Sep 3, 2005 -
100 comments
Kanye West gets twitchy on Red Cross Benefit Oh goodness. The young prankster in me loves this kind of thing. The boring matured realist version of me finds this divisive bumper-stickerism toxic to our modern political dialogue. And worse still I see the following scenario unfold:
Kanye West: "George Bush doesn't care about black people".
Cut to: My mother-in-law in front of the tv, slowly putting her checkbook back into her purse.
posted by glenwood
on Sep 2, 2005 -
187 comments
CNN of all places has a great overview of the BS coming out of washington about Katrina - "security is really good", the bodies in the convention center are "rumors" - versus reports from the ground. Fantasy land.
posted by brookish
on Sep 2, 2005 -
89 comments
They are feeding the public a line of bull, and they are spinning, and people are dying down here: A post with a link to MP3 of an explosive WWL radio interview in which New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has a message for politicians: "
I don't want to see anybody do any more goddamned press conferences... put a moratorium on press conferences, don't do another press conference until the resources are in this city, and then come down to this city and stand with us... Don't tell me 40,000 people are coming here - they're not here; it's too doggoned late. Now get off your asses and let's do something..."
posted by taz
on Sep 2, 2005 -
560 comments
"It doesn't make sense to me." Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert weighs in on rebuilding New Orleans during
an interview (
bugmenot) by the Chigago Daily Herald.
"It doesn’t make sense to me, and it’s a question that certainly we should ask. . . First of all your heart goes out to the people, the loss of their homes . . . but there are some real tough questions to ask about how you go about rebuilding this city. We help replace, we help relieve disaster . . . (Rebuilding) is certainly the decision the people of New Orleans are going to make. . . But I think federal insurance and everything goes along with it and we ought to take a second look at it. . . How do you go about rebuilding this city? What precautions do you take? . . . It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed.
. . But you know we build Los Angeles and San Francisco on top of earthquake fissures and they rebuild, too. Stubbornness."
Dennis Hastert was a sponsor of the legislation
that cut the funding needed to upgrade New Orleans levee system to withstand category 5 hurricanes. He also
failed to vote on legislation this year which would've provided additional funds for the Army Corps of Engineers.
posted by insomnia_lj
on Sep 1, 2005 -
98 comments
Some of the best still images of what remains in Hurricane Katrina's wake are up over at the
Washington Post; there are a lot of compelling shots there that put into perspective the horror of the situation. If you're looking for a well-edited group of photos that convey what the Gulf coast has faced over the past few days, and will face in the coming months, this is it; I'm in awe of the photographers that continue to work hard to document the disaster.
posted by delfuego
on Sep 1, 2005 -
48 comments
Drowning New Orleans [2001]A major hurricane could swamp New Orleans under 20 feet of water, killing thousands. Human activities along the Mississippi River have dramatically increased the risk, and now only massive reengineering of southeastern Louisiana can save the city
By Mark Fischetti
posted by Postroad
on Sep 1, 2005 -
91 comments
