I'd like to add a few things to the list of necessities. These are not items that would be needed for during or immediately after a storm, but if you are without power or amenities for weeks, these can help make life more bearable.
We were without power for several weeks after Katrina. Not only that, no banks, grocery stores, restaurants, or pharmacies were open for quite some time. Also, after Katrina, many of the items on the following list were in very short supply or downright impossible to find, so best to stock up now.
Air mattresses and pump. If you have people staying with you (evacuees, or family/friends who sustained enough damage to their residence to render it unlivable) this will make lives somewhat more pleasant. Or, if you have a two story house, you will NOT want to try to sleep on an upper floor. Remember, hurricane season is in the summer, which means that it's stinkin' hot. We slept on loaned air matresses in the living room for three weeks.
Generator. Duh. Fire it up now and make sure it works.
Small window-unit air conditioner. Remember, it'll be stinkin' hot, and a generator and a small AC can give you at least one cool room for sleeping.
Chain saw that works and the knowledge/skill to use it. Unless you live on a major thoroughfare it is entirely possible that you will have to cut your own way out. As soon as the storm passed, everyone who stayed and had chain saws got out and started clearing roads as much as possible. You can't sit back and wait for the authorities to come do it; in a major storm there's just too much to be done and they will need to concentrate their efforts on major roads. And don't think that interstates will be immune to blockage from trees. After the storm we tried to drive up I-59 and had to turn back shortly into Mississippi because it was completely blocked for miles from downed trees. However, I do want to again emphasize, have the skill to use it.
Heavy gloves. Lots of them.
Hand saw for when you run out of gas on the chainsaw.
A power inverter that will allow you to charge/run small items from your car.
Empty gas cans. Lots of them. These became impossible to find after Katrina.
Battery powered fans. Marine supply stores carry these. Get regular batteries as well as rechargeable batteries and use the inverter listed above to recharge them.
A few boxes of babywipes, or a strong tolerance for bracingly cold showers.
A fallback financial plan in case your job is destroyed by the storm.
A friend or relative who lives far away from the potential diaster area who has a list of people to notify that you are alive and all right. This way you only need to find one working phone to make one phone call. Four days after the storm I received a call from a woman in DC to tell me that my sister and her family had survived.
A cell phone that has the ability to send/receive text messages. For at least two weeks voice calls were erratic at best, but text messages would usually eventually go through.
Spare clothing that is stored in a high location. If you flood you might still have something to wear.
Clothespins. You'll waste generator gas for the washing machine, but no reason to do so for the dryer.
And remember, if there's a boil water order in effect, that means water for brushing teeth as well. (Realized that one the hard way.)
Just remember, for a major storm you need to anticipate being without power for several weeks.
Sign your donor card even if you're not sure if you can qualify. It's amazing just how much of you is recyclable. I work as a forensic photographer (I take pictures of autopsies) and recently helped with the autopsy of a 12 year old accident victim. Even though it was several hours after his death that he was found, LOPA was still able to harvest his long bones. (Those have to be taken within 24 hours of last known alive-time.)
For anyone on the fence about it, just know that the harvest teams are incredibly respectful and do absolutely everything in their power to keep the decedent's body in presentable condition. When they harvested the 12 year old's long bones, they replaced them with PVC pipe so that the legs would look normal.
You don't even have to go to the Ninth Ward to see how bad it still is. Just go a couple of miles up Canal Street toward the lake. Once you get out of the central business district, it goes back to being a devastated mess. The only places where you can kinda pretend that things are all right are in the CBD or on the ridges that took only a couple of feet of water. Go north on Canal, and then take some random side streets... the only thing that has changed since the storm is that the weeds are higher. Lakeview is a desolate mess. The whole thing is pathetic and depressing. I hate going into New Orleans--makes me cry every time.
Patrick, please see as much of the city as you can. Too many people think that since it's been almost a year that things must be back to normal, things must be rebuilt by now. But people forget that it wasn't just homes that flooded.. it was homes and grocery stores and walmarts and pharmacies and the pediatrician who has your baby's shot records and the library and the utility company and the hospitals... it was everything. We need people to realize that.
Lori--that's a great idea. Thanks.
Toni--that's a very sweet offer. :) Actually, we live on the northshore and suffered only minimal damage to our house so it was still livable. However, I work in law enforcement so I pretty much had to stick around afterwards (slogging through muck and sewage in search and recovery...ugh.) It was hardest on my then-fifteen-month-old daughter because of the heat. Basically, each day while I was off doing the search and recovery, as soon as it started to get really hot (y'know, like 8am) my husband would pack the baby into the car (since it had AC) and just drive, often to the other side of Baton Rouge (where gas was available.)
This year, the majority of our preparations take into account how to keep a toddler comfortable and occupied when there's no power. We even bought a power inverter and several Wiggles DVDs so that she can sit in the car and be occupied.
We started putting our hurricane kits together this week. We have several "stages" of kits this year, after our experience of last year. The first is, of course, the basic emergency kit: flashlights, water, batteries, duct tape, first aid kit, blah blah blah. The second is the car kit which includes Things To Keep Two Year Old Entertained during endless driving, as well as diapers, finger food, satellite radio, etc. Third is for the crappy weeks after the storm when there is no power and no food and no gas and no way to buy any of the above: non-perishable food that actually tastes good (please, god, not another MRE!), tons of baby wipes, air mattresses and battery-operated fans for sleeping on the ground floor when it is 99 degrees outside, a few cases of crystal-lite "on the go" water flavoring because last year I got so sick of plain warm water I never wanted to see another bottle, clothesline and clothespins for drying the clothes we will have to wash in the bathtub, bugspray, and sunscreen.
We're also getting the chain saw serviced and ready to go, and putting all of our precious pictures and disks in one box to take during evacuation. A friend of mine lost everything but the slab of her house in Katrina (she's now living in my rental house in Slidell), and she told me that before she'd evacuated she had very carefully put all of her pictures into ziploc bags. Right now, in the swamp, there are several ziploc bags floating around containing the (irreplaceable) pictures of her children.
But...they still get it right eventually. Hmm. I need to think about this.
Ummm... maybe because it's a fictional show?? Most "cop" shows are in essence mysteries, and if they didn't eventually get it right and find the bad guy by the end of the hour, the viewing audience would probably be mighty disappointed. Personally, I can't stand watching most crime/cop shows (especially that gawdawful CSI), but I do read the occasional mystery and pretty much all of them have the cops catch the bad guy by the last page. Go figure.
Terry--It's unfortunate that you had such an unpleasant experience with this particular cop, but I would like to defend the vast majority of police officers by stating that any cop who's worth a crap is going to know his constitutional law backwards, forwards and sideways, because when it comes right down to it you won't keep your job if you keep having your cases throw out due to probable cause errors, or at the very least you'll lose all credibility in court. And, trust me, the vast majority of cops do NOT want innocent people to go to jail. Pretty much everyone I work with or know in police work believes that it's far better for a guilty person to walk free than to send an innocent party to jail.
Oh, yikes... If you can at all avoid it, do NOT use a public defender. Mortgage your children if you have to, but hire a lawyer if you are in real threat of going to jail. Even a cheap crappy lawyer is often better than an overworked, underpaid, uninspired, burned-out public defender. I'm not saying all PDs are bad lawyers, but they ARE hideously overworked. To put it into perspective, before Katrina there were ~30 lawyers in the Indigent Defenders Office in New Orleans. At present there are ~7. For the whole city.
And yes, most people don't have a lawyer on retainer, but all you really need is the business card of one in your wallet so that if you ever do get into a jam, you at least know who to call.
Diana Rowland, what's your take on the talk-v.-no-talk debate?
Weeeellllll.... I remember when I first joined the force, one of the older guys on my team told me, "If you ever get called to IA just remember: Admit Nothing. Deny Everything. Demand Proof."
If you are actually guilty of a crime, the above advice is actually pretty darn good. While it might not be possible to get a conviction based solely on an incriminating statement, interviews and statements are powerful evidence that can lead investigators to areas where actual physical evidence can be obtained, or at the very least will provide enough probable cause to allow the investigator to get the warrants he needs to find that physical evidence.
If you're NOT guilty of a crime... well, unfortunately, being closed-mouthed and uncooperative will cast you in an unfavorable light. But. That being said, if it appears that you might be under true suspicion of a crime, you're really a flipping idiot if you talk to the police without a lawyer. You're a flipping idiot if you consent to a search, any search, without consulting with your lawyer first. This doesn't mean that you should never talk to the police. I'm just saying you need to take advantage of the rights that are yours under our constitution, get solid advice from a good lawyer on what to say, know your rights, and use lots of common sense.
If you don't know your rights, then you don't have any, and you have no one to blame but yourself.
Also, in response to a different post: Not every jurisdiction has access to same-day DNA results (despite what that stupid CSI show depicts.) For us, it usually takes several weeks to get results back. Also, if the police want a DNA sample from you, they just have to get enough probable cause for a warrant to get a buccal swab (inside of the cheek.) I would have an extremely hard time believing that a sample obtained from a used glass would be at all admissable in court since I don't see how chain of custody could be verified. When we collect buccal swabs it is documented and tracked, with no doubt about from whom the sample was obtained.
I am a police officer/crime scene investigator, and pretty much everything that Annie G said is spot on. However, I do want to add that Miranda rights do not "officially" kick in until the person is detained and being interrogated. There's a lot of wiggle room in there as far as detention and interrogation. If someone is not under arrest and is free to get up and leave at any time--whether he is being questioned or not--he is not being officially detained. Just because he doesn't get up and leave, does't mean he was not free to, and is not the fault of the police. And, like Annie said, if the suspect talks on his own, that is not an interrogation. Voluntary statements are certainly admissable.
That being said, physical evidence is far far more desirable, e.g. baliistics, fingerprints, gunshot residue, blood spatter, fiber transer. Confessions, lineups, and eyewitness identifications are notoriously crappy and inaccurate.
I applied for aid after Katrina on FEMA's website, and answered truthfully when it asked questions about evacuation, damage, and whether I was in immediate need of food and shelter. I answered truthfully, since I had canned food and a roof over my head, that I was not in immediate need. Based on that, they denied all assistance. Luckily my husband has the Gift of getting things done, and he called FEMA and somehow got it straightened out so that we could get the $2000.
Over the next two weeks they sent us three applications for SBA loans. We did not have major damage, so we had no intention of applying for further aid. Then came a phone call stating that they had to come inspect our property. Umm.. okay, so I let the man come over, and told him that we had minimal damage and really didn't need any more aid. The next day I had a recorded phone call stating that due to the widespread damage in my area, an inspection would not be required. Three days later I got another SBA application in the mail. It's completely insane.
Graydon said: What makes you think an accurate casualty total has been reported or is being collected?
The question of total casualties went off the air and has stayed off the air with disturbing thoroughness.
Maybe in other parts of the country, but down here the casualty count is in the paper every day with how many bodies were found the day before. I can give first-hand on-the-ground testimony that the casualty count, at least in St. Tammany Parish where the eye of the storm went through, is far far lower than was initially estimated. We truly thought that it was going to be at least a thousand dead here, and when I was working on the search and recovery teams we had 500 body bags ready and waiting just for the neighborhood I was working on. We found zero bodies in my search grid, to our huge relief and surprise. So far, we have 8 storm-related deaths in this parish. I believe it is slightly over 800 in Orleans and St. Bernard. Now then, we are still going through the debris piles, but it's still not going to come anywhere near the initial estimates.
I thought the first picture kinda said it all.
CPR works. Back when I was a road deputy I came across a traffic accident where it turned out that the driver had done a keel-over kinda thing. I performed CPR for almost 20 minutes on him, until the EMTs could get there and shock him back to life.
He was a smoker too. Yuck. And no, I didn't have a mask to use. Sometimes you just do what needs to be done.
Interstate 10 between Houston and San Antonio is bumper-to-bumper gridlock.
The monday-morning quarterbackers sneer and point fingers at southeast Louisiana while they screech about how unfair it was that people without cars were unable to evacuate and rail that there should have been a better plan in place. No argument there. Yes, there should have been an option for those without cars, but what a lot of people don't realize is that for the million or so with cars, the evacuation was smooth and relatively free of gridlock thanks to the contraflow system. That's one thing that Louisiana got right. Without the contraflow system (which utilizes built-in crossovers and switches traffic flow on both sides of the interstate to outgoing) then only a fraction of those evacauting by vehicle would have made it, and a large number of those stuck in traffic would have given up and turned around and gone back home to ride out the storm. That's what happened during Ivan--the last storm that could have wiped out New Orleans-- but it turned at the last minute and hit Florida instead. It took people 12 hours to go 30 miles and many gave up and went back home, not wanting to ride out a hurricane in their car on the interstate. Without contraflow, had there been buses, they still would have been stuck in traffic.
No, it's not the guardsmen's fault at all. They were all wonderful to work with and they busted their butts doing what needed doing without even a whisper of complaint about the nasty conditions. (Of course, these guys had all served in Iraq, so this wasn't all that bad, considering.)
As far as training goes, there was one deputy or firefighter per team as the leader, and then three guardsmen per team. My training consisted of working with a firefighter the day before so that I knew the symbols to paint on the houses and the procedures for entering and searching. The guardsmen followed me, learned how to do the symbols, and did what I told them to do. They were fantastic, and I just wish that we'd had them days earlier.
Tom, where I'm talking about isn't even in the city. This is Slidell, just north of New Orleans, where there was no civil unrest or looting, just massive destruction where the eye went through. The guardsmen sat around for days because no one knew what to do or where to send them. I think the military term is "clusterfuck."
Laurie, yes! I had a team of three guardsmen from Alabama working with me on Monday and Tuesday, and they were bitching about the fact that they had been sitting doing nothing for three days while the Powers That Be tried to figure out where to put them. Three days during which we were slogging through mud and sewage on our own covering a fraction of the ground we covered once we expanded from four teams to over twenty.
By the way, if you ever find yourself on a search and recovery team, make sure you wear proper protective garb. It wasn't until Monday that they started passing out masks to us to wear inside the moldy houses. By that time my cough had already taken hold. Then on Tuesday while we were lining up and getting ready to deploy to our seach areas, a paramedic got up and preached to us about how we needed to stop and brush our teeth or gargle listerine for four minutes four times a day while we were seaching. Someone asked him if he had toothbrushes and toothpaste or mouthwash and he said, "Well, umm.. no, you should have brought those with you." Okay, yeah... I always think to bring a toothbrush when I'm going to be crawling through mud. And decontamination consisted of washing our boots off with a firehose. I can't imagine why I have an intestinal bug right now.
Oh, lest there be any confusion re the fact that I live in a conservative parish: I most assuredly did NOT vote for the Shrub.
Sigh. I'm always amazed at how people are so eager to gobble up all of the awful stories. Somehow the amazing stories of courage and endurance and sacrifice get lost. Not all police officers are fascist pigs out to kill and destroy all of the lower-class citizens. Some of us down here are busting our asses to help our fellow man--even after suffering losses of our own.
I know, that's not as fun to rant about.
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