Des Moines, August 31st, 2005 - As Iowans watch the devastation from Hurricane Katrina our first instinct is to reach out and help. Iowa is answering that need.

Governor Vilsack announced yesterday afternoon that the state will send close to 100 people to assist in cleanup and relief efforts in Louisiana. In the next 24 hours Iowa National Guard soldiers and medical personnel from the Department of Public Health will be on the ground in Louisiana. Their job: to help those hard hit areas begin the process of getting back on their feet.

Tuesday, Louisiana's Governor requested help with power generation. So the Iowa National Guard is sending about 60 soldiers and 9 generators that will provide back up power to the Superdome. The truck platoon will also help transport supplies through the high waters. And with thousands still in shelters a team of 30 doctors, nurses and paramedics are joining the soldiers to assist in caring for people's medical needs. "This is obviously an extraordinarily difficult circumstance for everybody. I think we all want to pitch in and make a real difference", says Vilsack.

This isn't the first time Iowa has been called on to help states recover from natural disasters. There have been six other deployments but this is one of Iowa's larger responses.

The poorest 20% (you can argue with the number -- 10%? 18%? no one knows) of the city was left behind to drown. This was the plan. Forget the sanctimonious bullshit about the bullheaded people who wouldn't leave. The evacuation plan was strictly laissez-faire. It depended on privately owned vehicles, and on having ready cash to fund an evacuation. The planners knew full well that the poor, who in new orleans are overwhelmingly black, wouldn't be able to get out. The resources -- meaning, the political will -- weren't there to get them out.

White per capita income in Orleans parish, 2000 census: $31,971. Black per capita: $11,332. Median household income in B.W. Cooper (Calliope) Housing Projects, 2000: $13,263.

There are dead animals floating in the water, pets left behind. Surely people thought they would be back to collect the pets. Not so. The rescuers smell like gas when they come back in; there's gas in all of the water that consumes the area. Fires are burning all over the place. Our teams are tired and they are thirsty and they are hungry. And they have a place to sleep and water to drink and food to eat. I can only imagine how the people without these "luxuries" are feeling right now.
Each night will be a race against time. When night falls, people can't get picked up from roofs, the rescuers can't chop into people's roofs to check the attics for anyone alive or for anyone dead (sadly, there are dead). At night we can't see power lines we can't see obstacles, we can't see any of the things that will bring down a helicopter or pose a danger to boats rescuers.

One of the teams came in today after having been out for hours at a time. One particular rescuer went straight to a corner and collapsed into tears. I went directly to him and just held his hand. What else could I do? I said nothing. He said it all. They lowered him 26 times and he pulled 26 people to safety. He wants to be back out there but there are mandatory rest periods. His tears are tears of frustration.

Crying won't help you, praying won't do you no good
Now, crying won't help you, praying won't do you no good
When the levee breaks, mama, you got to move.
                                                               Memphis Minnie McCoy
                                                               When the Levee Breaks
                                                               1929

f the '27 flood turned the Delta into an inland sea, Katrina has turned most of New Orleans into a toxic cesspool:

Murky water, laced with junk and pollutants, coursed through the city, including many downtown streets. Residents and rescuers came across floating bodies, though the city's death toll was still unknown late Tuesday . . .
The experts warned of potential dangers ahead. Louisiana's frequent summer rains -- or even another hurricane -- could add to flooding in coming days or weeks, they said. The sitting water could collect more contaminants from homes and industries, and mosquitoes could amplify the danger of disease.

"Because it doesn't drain, there's a chance for things to concentrate," said Marc Levitan, another flooding expert at LSU.

For years, meterologists, hydraulic engineers and environmentalists have predicted something like this would happen. Not long after Hurricane Andrew erased Homestead, Fla. from the map, I interviewed an insurance industry disaster expert who told me that if a storm like that ever hit New Orleans, it would blow most of the city into Lake Ponchartrain. (Of course, he was wrong in the end: Instead it blew most of Lake Ponchartrain into the city.)

It's easy, even for reasonable people, to disregard those scenarios. The worst case, after all, doesn't usually happen. But the flooding of New Orleans, like the destruction of Pompeii, is a graphic demonstration of the fact that sometimes the worst case (or something like it) does happen, especially when it is preceded by years of willful ignorance and blind self interest.

If the worst case for global climate change comes to pass, the environmental and economic losses will dwarf, many times over, the costs of Hurricane Katrina. They'll also reduce into insignificance the price tag on the Kyoto Treaty -- which itself may be too little, too late. If Shrub really thinks that doing something about climate change would "wreck the economy," he should spend some of his unused vacation time thinking about what just happened to New Orleans.