Learning how to swim might preserve your subsistence in emergency crises like the massive flooding that afflicted New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2006 and Kerrville, Texas just before July 4 of this year. But after that, in the case of Katrina, it helped to be a moneyed social class to survive if not prosper. Warnings from experts in government positions were ignored--the coordinator of the National Weather Service was fired in favor of privatized concerns far less equipped or competent to act. In the case of Kerrville, the newly hired (in May) Trump crony, David Richardson, acting administrator of FEMA, didn't even know there was a hurricane season.
Greg Palast's previous account of a flooding debacle, Big Easy to Big Empty (2006), narrates how New Orleans wasn't even struck by Katrina; the levees, 18 inches high, couldn't block the attendant gargantuan flooding Mississippi River that toppled them like balsa wood and killed 1500. The countrywide experts at Louisiana State University (LSU) had warned FEMA officials in advance of Katrina to no avail. Their meticulous evacuation plan was cancelled by George W. Bush and the head of the LSU department, Professor Ivor Van Hearden, was fired; the entire department had to be liquidated to allow for this. Emergency evacuation planning fell into privatized hands with plans geared only toward evacuating cars. Homes were gutted and rebuilt by the government if they were mansions. The Blacks from poorer neighborhoods, if they survived, were confined to stubby FEMA trailers in a space blocked on all sides by barbed-wire fencing, a Guantanamo on wheels; they were allowed to leave solely to a local Walmart. Victims couldn't visit the wreckage of their old homes, even when the homes had survived intact. Their beloved old neighborhoods were transformed into slick condos for a higher financial echelon, conservatives, who were considered far more appropriate for an area so close to the tony French Quarter.
The Katrina disaster occurred 20 years ago this month.
Fast forward to All Washed Away: Kerrville, Texas preparing to celebrate July 4. A girls' Christian camp, popular and beloved for decades, scenically situated on the Guadalupe River, was protected by no emergency evacuation protocols--there were no provisions for campsites. This was a white population, DT's favorite demographic, but 139 locals perished, including 27 of the campers, and the rest suffered badly from trauma and loss. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem held up rescue operations on a technicality while rescue workers did what they could to pull corpses out of the deep flood waters. The National Weather Service was again gutted [1]; one-third of FEMA already closed; a private firm had been retained for emergency operations instead.
Greg Palast [2] is first to tie these tragedies together under the heading "privatization (briberization [3]) kills." FEMA under the direction of George W. Bush did just that--sacrificing underclasses to promote gentrification. In his inimitable and outrageously valiant way, flanked by his camera crew, in New Orleans, Palast confronts the corporate conmen in their offices in Baton Rouge before being ejected unsurprisingly, having spoken truth to power. In Texas, he confronts the Trump/DOGE scheme to sell off FEMA and enters the IWB, the InterAgency Board for Emergency Preparedness and Response, the firm supposed to take over emergency operations from FEMA, with similar results: the CEO hides behind closed doors as her henchmen stammer lame prevarifications before Palast is ejected.
Both films resulted from reports for Amy Goodman's progressive radio series Democracy Now, both written and reported by Greg Palast and produced by Matt Pascarella. To view All Washed Away for free, a one-hour film, go to Greg's substack at Click Here or YouTube at Click Here.
[1] NOA had been revived, after the G. W. Bush tenure, by Obama and Biden.
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