Katrina Coverage

2theadvocate.com: News - Disaster response 10/23/05
…Buses are not among [FEMA's] pre-staged supplies [MREs, cots, etc.].
Within hours of Katrina hitting on Monday [Aug 29], FEMA promised to deliver buses, according to Blanco.
On Tuesday [Aug 30], Blanco aide Leonard Kleinpeter recalled, the governor asked him to start trying to arrange for use of school buses.
FEMA relies on […]

From Bush Adviser Acknowledges Lack of Preparation for Katrina:
…the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said yesterday that its official timeline had discounted eyewitness reports by its top official in New Orleans, Col. Richard Wagenaar, confirming a levee breach Monday night. Instead, the Corps said the break was confirmed at 8 a.m. Tuesday.
"We probably had some […]

According to Bush Adviser Acknowledges Lack of Preparation for Katrina, on the night of Monday August 29, Marty Bahamonde reported to Michael Brown that "he had observed a massive break on the Lake Pontchartrain levee [the 17th Avenue Canal levee] and flooding over 80 percent of the city". Brown told Bahamonde that he would call […]

Piecing together the unconfirmed timeline presented in "Key military help for victims of Hurricane Katrina was delayed" we get:
- Aug 29: landfall; "levee breaches" occur
Aug 29 3:22:00 PM - Navy says USS Bataan is standing by.
- Aug 30: Michael Chertoff goes to Atlanta for a "previously scheduled briefing on avian flu"
- Aug 30: "[Chertoff] aides […]

From "The Steady Buildup to a City's Chaos" comes this Sunday, August 28 news:
At the Superdome, city officials reckoned that 9,000 people had arrived by evening to ride out the storm. FEMA had sent seven trailers full of food and water — enough, it estimated, to supply two days of food for as many as […]

From "The Steady Buildup to a City's Chaos" comes this explanation of what I saw on the TV at the time:
Army Corps officials were trying to close the gaps in the levees [on Aug. 30], but their hurried efforts to stem the flow were hampered by a lack of supplies. They could not find 10-ton […]

…at least to your reporter.
From the report "No quick fix for New Orleans' breached levees", updated at 11:12 p.m. ET Aug. 30, 2005:
As failing levees allowed the murky waters of Lake Pontchartrain to inundate the streets of New Orleans on Tuesday, one thing was becoming clearer: Staunching the flood tide was not likely to be […]

Aug. 31's "After Escaping New Orleans, a Long Wait" discussed the events of Tuesday Aug. 30 in Metarie "on the edge of Interstate 10" near the Causeway Boulevard exit:
…2,000 hungry, flood-weary people, residents of New Orleans' northern neighborhoods and St. Bernard Parish to the northeast… everything they owned on their backs after 36 hours of […]