New Orleans: The Interdictor

DirectNIC

This has been one of the most compelling and consistently readable blogs on the harrowing New Orleans situation. Michael Barnett is the Crisis Manager of a communications team (Intercosmos Media Group, Inc.) who remained on the 10th floor of their office building in New Orleans. In his own words: “This journal has become the Survival of New Orleans blog. In less perilous times it was simply a blog for me to talk smack and chat with friends. Now this journal exists to share firsthand experience of the disaster and its aftermath with anyone interested.”

A few excerpts from the last few days:

“For those of you who haven’t been reading this, I’m on the 10th/11th floors of a 27 floor high rise at 650 Poydras in downtown New Orleans. If you go to Google Earth or some other map program, we’re the big brown building between Poydras ave and Lafayette Square and between Camp Street and St. Charles Ave. We’re about 6 blocks from the river. We have a view (in the daytime) of the river, the twin spans over the river, the interstate, the Entergy building, the landmark building, the federal court of appeals building, a bunch of hotels, etc.

“Welcome to ground zero.”

~ ~ ~

“If you have any survival tips, feel free to toss in your input. I’ve got a lot of survival training, but we’ve never trained for the total collapse of civilization (or I should say, my only training in that regard was from a military perspective).”

~ ~ ~

“The city really does look like a ghost town. It’s so bizarre to see streets which are normally highly trafficed having such a limited flow of vehicles. And at night it’s weird to see all these high rises with no light coming from the buildings. No street lights, no traffic lights, the clock on the Whitney Bank building on Poydras and Camp — a widely recognized feature — is stopped. The debris is still everywhere. Cars abandoned all over the place. Abandoned and trashed. And the quiet. Aside from the occasional vehicle, this place has no sound. Every piece of glass that used to be a high rise window which hits the ground can be heard blocks away.

“I wonder how things will be different in this city when this is all behind us.”

~ ~ ~

“If you were just watching the cam, you saw a police APC drive by with the top open and a bunch of officers point their guns out. There’s definitely a show of force. Not sure why it’s like that in this sector, since we’re just a handful of blocks away from a major National Guard and law enforcement staging area.”

~ ~ ~

“The government is never equipped to handle a crisis like this. There’s too much bureaucracy — initiative-stifling bureaucracy which prevents swift, effective action. I would like to hear from government employees on this. The nature of that bureaucracy is such that you have very specific guidelines to follow for even the most minute tasks. You need approval for just about everything, and the person you need approval from usually needs approval to give you the approval.

“It’s not as easy as say rounding up 4 of your co-workers and saying, “We’ve got someone at such and such an address, let’s go grab her and get her out of there.” Now add a destroyed or disabled command and control center to that bureaucracy and you’ve got a total and complete mess.

“You (as a civilian) don’t need “Approved” stamped on 3 different forms before you can run into your neighbor’s house and pull them out. I hope this makes sense.”

~ ~ ~

“Three days ago, police and national guard troops told citizens to head toward the Crescent City Connection Bridge to await transportation out of the area. The citizens trekked over to the Convention Center and waited for the buses which they were told would take them to Houston or Alabama or somewhere else, out of this area.

“It’s been 3 days, and the buses have yet to appear.”

Click here to read Michael’s blog: DirectNIC

This entry was posted on September 5, 2005 at 1:56 pm and is filed under Resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.