Reading this book made me cry.
America should do better, there needs to be better planning, and better response when something happens. ( )

[a:Douglas Brinkley|7109|Douglas Brinkley|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1321669683p2/7109.jpg] holds nothing back in this fabulous account of what really happened in New Orleans during Katrina. We all saw the TV footage, which was heartbreaking. In this book you hear the victims full stories and they will break your heart all over again. Brinkley also rips into the ineptitude of those who should have been helping. Starting with Mayor, hiding on the 27th floor of a hotel, all the way up to Homeland Security and the President, who dawdled and twiddled their thumbs while New Orleans drowned.

The book, a tomb at 768 pages, also tells you the stories of the every day hero-the people that stepped up when they did not have to. The band of wealthy who banded together and became "The Cajun Navy". These folks took their boats into the areas no one else would go, and rescued hundreds of people who may have died without their effort.

This was a really hard book to finish at this point in life-too much of it reminded me of the current situation with this pandemic and the ineptitude of one of the worlds super powers to organize and help it's people. ( )

Hurricane Katrina was one of the most devastating storms in American history. Narrowly missing being a Category 5 hurricane and just skirting New Orleans to the east Katrina brought utter destruction to the Gulf Coast. The brunt of the storm's force hit the Mississippi coast where the physical effects of winds and storm surge wiped out coastal communities. The delta parishes of Southeast Louisiana were flooded. The relatively recent loss of wetlands and marshes created significantly more damage since the sponge-like absorption characteristics of the wetlands were not present to mitigate the high water.

Brinkley's account traces several themes. The city of New Orleans, despite being so patently vulnerable to hurricanes, was shockingly unprepared. No thorough plans were in place and the city administration's response strategy was mostly to ask (later, too late, to mandate) people to evacuate. Officials seemed unaware that hundreds of thousands of residents had no means with which to flee. Obvious steps to preposition resources -- food, water, rescue capability, especially transportation -- were completely absent. Most of the devastation to New Orleans was not from the storm itself but from the failure of levees along the city's major canals. The canals and their adjacent pumping stations were intended to pump away water from overflowing Lake Pontchartrain but once breached the flooding could not be restrained. New Orleans is described as a bowl floating in another full of water. As the rim of the bowl began to overflow there was nothing to stop it from filling. Brinkley says that failure to properly engineer the levees and to maintain them caused this flooding.

Brinkley points to the incompetence of many authorities and the heroism and effectiveness of a few. Mayor Ray Nagin is depicted as utterly unable to provide any degree of leadership, not even showing symbolic empathy for those impacted. Governor Blanco was overwhelmed but she got lukewarm response from the Bush administration in bringing federal resources to bear. Homeland Security secretary Chartoff did not seem to appreciate how horrific the event was and did not direct the response with the urgency that was required. President Bush likewise seemed lethargic in his leadership. Most criticism is directed toward FEMA under director Michael Brown which never got its act together to deliver on the most basic disaster response priorities. Likewise, the New Orleans Police Department was useless and often seemed hostile to the city's residents who were suffering. The descriptions of widespread looting following the storm are ugly.

Most praise is focused on the Coast Guard who heroically and without cease rescued thousands of New Orleanians trapped in their homes. Similarly, ad hoc groups of citizens carried out rescues using resources they brought to the scene or improvised on the spot.

Two principal areas of refuge are described in disturbing detail. The Superdome was sought out by tens of thousands of people to escape the high waters. Even before this event the authorities knew that it was incapable of supporting even the basic needs of people: water, sanitation and food. The air conditioning failed as the power went out and the conditions were abysmal. Even worse was the convention center where desperate people broke in to escape. Brinkley details the abhorrent situations that people were faced to endure for days. Efforts to provide transportation out of these sites stymied local, state and national authorities for days. That many people died due to lack of intervention is made clear.

Quite a lot of this history is told through the personal experiences of victims, responders, media persons and officials. One gets a very graphic picture of how awful this storm was to those who lived through it and how disorganized and incompetent was the response of entities charged with helping them. Brinkley hints that one factor in the slow response was that the majority of those affected were African-Americans who, somehow, were responsible for their plight since they didn't evacuate.

Like other works by Brinkley this book is overly long; the same points are made over and over. Nonetheless, one gets a vivid understanding of the suffering wrought by Katrina and the utterly inadequate response by most of the government jurisdictions responsible for alleviating that suffering.

My daughter and I visited New Orleans in the fall of 2014. We camped in St. Bernard Parish to the east of the city. I expected to see a lot more visible evidence of the storm even though it was nine years after. Perhaps the clean-up efforts were effective or maybe the damage just isn't visible to outside view.

Two other books on Katrina worth reading are "Five Days at Memorial" telling the disturbing story of the staff and patients stranded at that hospital, and "Zeitoun" that tells one man's story of his personal response to the storm and the injustice of the legal system that falsely accused him of looting. ( )

Good overall perspective, but there are quite a few factual errors in the book. My guess is that Brinkley rushed to get it into print as soon as possible. ( )

Hurricane Katrina was one of the most devastating storms in American history. Narrowly missing being a Category 5 hurricane and just skirting New Orleans to the east Katrina brought utter destruction to the Gulf Coast. The brunt of the storm's force hit the Mississippi coast where the physical effects of winds and storm surge wiped out coastal communities. The delta parishes of Southeast Louisiana were flooded. The relatively recent loss of wetlands and marshes created significantly more damage since the sponge-like absorption characteristics of the wetlands were not present to mitigate the high water.

Brinkley's account traces several themes. The city of New Orleans, despite being so patently vulnerable to hurricanes, was shockingly unprepared. No thorough plans were in place and the city administration's response strategy was mostly to ask (later, too late, to mandate) people to evacuate. Officials seemed unaware that hundreds of thousands of residents had no means with which to flee. Obvious steps to preposition resources -- food,water, rescue capability, especially transportation -- were completely absent. Most of the devastation to New Orleans was not from the storm itself but from the failure of levees along the city's major canals. The canals and their adjacent pumping stations were intended to pump away water from overflowing Lake Pontchartrain but once breached the flooding could not be restrained. New Orleans is described as a bowl floating in another full of water. As the rim of the bowl began to overflow there was nothing to stop it from filling. Brinkley says that failure to properly engineer the levees and to maintain them caused this flooding.

Brinkley points to the incompetence of many authorities and the heroism and effectiveness of a few. Mayor Ray Nagin is depicted as utterly unable to provide any degree of leadership, not even showing symbolic empathy for those impacted. Governor Blanco was overwhelmed but she got lukewarm response from the Bush administration in bringing federal resources to bear. Homeland Security secretary Chartoff did not seem to appreciate how horrific the event was and did not direct the response with the urgency that was required. President Bush likewise seemed lethargic in his leadership. Most criticism is directed toward FEMA under director Michael Brown which never got its act together to deliver on the most basic disaster response priorities. Likewise, the New Orleans Police Department was useless and often seemed hostile to the city's residents who were suffering. The descriptions of widespread looting following the storm are ugly.

Most praise is focused on the Coast Guard who heroically and without cease rescued thousands of New Orleanians trapped in their homes. Similarly, ad hoc groups of citizens carried out rescues using resources they brought to the scene or improvised on the spot.

Two principal areas of refuge are described in disturbing detail. The Superdome was sought out by tens of thousands of people to escape the high waters. Even before this event the authorities knew that it was incapable of supporting even the basic needs of people: water, sanitation and food. The air conditioning failed as the power went out and the conditions were abysmal. Even worse was the convention center where desperate people broke in to escape. Brinkley details the abhorrent situations that people were faced to endure for days. Efforts to provide transportation out of these sites stymied local, state and national authorities for days. That many people died due to lack of intervention is made clear.

Quite a lot of this history is told through the personal experiences of victims, responders, media persons and officials. One gets a very graphic picture of how awful this storm was to those who lived through it and how disorganized and incompetent was the response of entities charged with helping them. Brinkley hints that one factor in the slow response was that the majority of those affected were African-Americans who, somehow, were responsible for their plight since they didn't evacuate.

Like other works by Brinkley this book is overly long; the same points are made over and over. Nonetheless, one gets a vivid understanding of the suffering wrought by Katrina and the utterly inadequate response by most of the government jurisdictions responsible for alleviating that suffering.

My daughter and I visited New Orleans in the fall of 2014. We camped in St. Bernard Parish to the east of the city. I expected to see a lot more visible evidence of the storm even though it was nine years after. Perhaps the clean-up efforts were effective or maybe the damage just isn't visible to outside view.

Two other books on Katrina worth reading are "Five Days at Memorial" telling the disturbing story of the staff and patients stranded at that hospital, and "Zeitoun" that tells one man's story of his personal response to the storm and the injustice of the legal system that falsely accused him of looting. ( )