Tag Archives: Katrina

Global Warming, New York, The Jersey Shore, and Canada

People enjoying the beach in Montreal, Canada

Image 1:  People enjoying the beach in Montreal, Canada, courtesy Jazz Hostels

While climate change and global warming will mean longer and hotter summers and shorter and warmer winters farther north in the northern hemisphere than previously, and even though we make like longer hotter summers and shorter, warmer winters …

Warmer and shorter winters mean thinner ice on frozen lakes – and people crashing through the thin ice and drowning in places like Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, Idaho and Alaska, and Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta, and British Columbia.

Longer hotter summers also mean warmer oceans and an atmosphere that can hold more heat.

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Disaster Accountability Blog: Public Accountability Requires Citizen Action disasteraccountability.org

ap-alex-brandon-photo-via-daylifecom610x.jpgThe Disaster Accountability Project Blog reports that an investigation has been called for into allegations that the Corps of Engineers and contractors knowingly installed defective pumps in New Orleans.

In September of 2007 the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) ordered

Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, to conduct an investigation into the allegation that defective pumping equipment was delivered and installed at the three new gated closure structures in New Orleans. These are the main pumps protecting the city of New Orleans in the event of a major hurricane or flood. OSC said in its letter to Gates that they concluded the allegations made by this whistleblower had a substantial likelihood of validity and that these pumps are “inherently flawed” due to poor design and have still not been properly tested.

Also, the OSC went on to state this same pumping equipment had previously malfunctioned under favorable contractor testing conditions and was subsequently shown to be defective, yet was knowingly installed by the Corps of Engineers.

In addition, the OSC went on further to state the whistleblower, a veteran Corps engineer who was the Team Leader of Pumping Systems Installation for New Orleans, alleged USACE employees and MWI (the pump manufacturer) circumvented contract requirements in an effort to complete the task, all at the expense of public safety. It was reported that key safeguards were circumvented and “there is an erroneous assumption that…hydraulic pumps are fully operational, and hence, the risk to the public remains high,” in the words of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.

New Orleans Pumps Still Questionable at The Disaster Accountability Project Blog.

Image by Alex Brandon of the Associated Press on DayLife.Com


McCain Criticizes Katrina Response as ‘Disgraceful’ – New York Times

Elisabeth Bumiller reports in the

Times

that Senator McCain has not only described the Administration’s reponse to Katrina a ‘disgraceful,’ but that he also believed that the President was directly responsible.

Asked at an outdoor news conference if he traced the failure of leadership straight to the top, Mr. McCain, who has vowed to campaign with President Bush, said, emphatically, “yes.”

Before his news conference, Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, spent about half an hour on a walking tour of rubble and still-dilapidated houses in the Lower Ninth Ward, all recorded by two packed, slow-moving flatbed trucks of reporters and camera crews who rumbled just ahead of the candidate and his wife, Cindy.

At least one resident was disturbed by all the media attention, particularly by the lack of seats for local residents at Mr. McCain’s 20-minute news conference. “We need to have an opportunity to have a meaningful dialogue,” said Mary Fontenot, who is with All Congregations Together, a church group working to rebuilding New Orleans. “Twenty minutes out on the lawn does not suffice, with a designated seating for traveling journalists.”

Elisabeth Bumiller, “McCain Criticizes Katrina Response as ‘Disgraceful’ “- The New York Times

Via Buzzflash.