GRETNA — Rather than send pump workers 100 miles north of the city when a hurricane threatens, Jefferson Parish will build 20 "safe houses" to ensure that pumps can be started quickly in case of floods, Parish President Aaron Broussard said.
When Hurricane Katrina struck, Broussard sent 236 pump workers to Washington Parish under the "Doomsday […]
You may recall Larry Bradshaw and Lorrie Beth Slonsky as the pair who wrote about their experiences trying to get over the Crescent City Connection from New Orleans into Gretna ("Building communism under the overpass"). Bradshaw will apparently be featured on December 18th's 60 Minutes talking about the incident.
From Drudge:
…Larry Bradshaw, who is white, says […]
From this:
When the 17th Street Canal levee crumbled, Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard couldn't go to the Home Depot to buy materials to staunch the flood encroaching from New Orleans. What he could do, under the sweeping emergency authority provided by state law, was raid the Lafarge Construction Materials plant at 3320 Airline Drive for […]
From this:
As controversy continues to churn about Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard's decision to evacuate more than 200 pump station workers the day before Hurricane Katrina, officials in New Orleans are vowing to take a hard look at their decision to require pump station workers to staff their posts, an order that endangered the lives […]
From Pump workers say they wanted to stay:
Even as they followed orders to abandon their stations before Hurricane Katrina slashed ashore, some of Jefferson Parish's pump operators asked why they couldn't stay.
Why couldn't some volunteers, possibly as many as 30 workers on the West Bank alone, ride out the hurricane in a parish building, they […]
From this:
Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard said Friday he is moving to sack the head of the East Jefferson Levee District, who publicly questioned the Broussard administration's decision to evacuate drainage pump workers as Hurricane Katrina hurtled towards the Gulf Coast.
Broussard sent a letter asking Gov. Kathleen Blanco to remove Patrick Bossetta as Levee Board […]
From this:
A frustrated New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin warned Thursday that it would be in the state's best interest to help the Crescent City jump-start its Hurricane Katrina-riddled economy, saying the impact on the state — if nothing is done — will pale in comparison to the layoffs the city recently announced.
"You think 3,000 layoffs […]
As previously discussed, Aaron Broussard sent the Jefferson Parish pump operators out of harm's way because their stations weren't built to withstand such storms. However, as also discussed, he seems to have sent them a bit too far, as the Times-Pic says in "The pump debacle":
…Mr. Broussard's concern for public employees' welfare is understandable. Existing […]
The BBC will be showing a doc called "The Hurricane That Shook America", and they promote it in Fema 'knew of New Orleans danger'.
There appear to be two slightly newsworthy bits of info:
a key briefing officer within Fema sent a message directly to Mr Brown early on the day before Katrina hit, warning him […]
As previously discussed, Aaron Broussard evacuated the Jefferson Parish pump operators.
If "Jeff pump operators gone 24 hours" is to be believed, he might have been right in at least sending them out of harm's way, although whether he could have put them somewhere where they could have been brought them back sooner seems like a […]
