Gerry Charlotte Phelps

Raise New Orleans Ground Level LIke Galveston Did

New Orleans sits between the Gulf and a lake.  It also sits in a bowl below sea level, so that enough rain, wind or storm can always flood it.  Nothing can change that.  Or can it?  Why can't New Orleans do what they did in Galveston in 1900?

                      Depiction of Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900

                            (Image from patentpending.blogs.com)

Between 6,000-12,000 people died in the great Galveston hurricane of 1900.  By today's standards, it was a category 4 hurricane, with winds measured at 134 mph, before the wind guage blew away.  It is still the worst natural disaster ever to hit the United States.

                            (Image from dallasnews.com)

But Galveston counter-attacked.  The city fathers decided not only to build a sea wall, but also to raise the ground level of Galveston Island, to get above future floods.

              (Image from 1900storm.com)

With primitive tools by today's standards, they jacked up the buildings, some 17 feet or more high above the ground.  They even jacked up their stone cathedral!  They put railings around the wooden sidewalks downtown, so people would not fall off as they shopped. 

7

                             (Image from farm1.static.flikr.com)

Then, while they conducted business as usual downtown, they dredged dirt out of Galveston Bay and out of a place on Galveston Island that is now a lake.  With this dirt, they filled in layer after layer of dirt under their jacked-up buildings.  Now Galveston sits permanently some 17 feet higher than before their terrible disaster, protected by a sea wall as well.

(Dredge material is pumped into the island during the grade raising after the 1900 hurricane.  Residents endured years of pumps, sludge, canals, stench and miles of catwalks during the project.  Photo courtesy of Rosenburg Library.)

Why couldn't we do that in New Orleans?  Raise the ground level?

There is no point in moving New Orleans elsewhere.  A city is needed right there, to service the huge traffic in one of the busiest, most important ports in the world.  The workers need a place to live in, reasonably close to the port.

But what point is there in continually rebuilding  New Orleans, flood after flood?  Or in being totally dependent on a huge, elaborate system of dikes and levees, which are subject to leaks, breaches and over-topping?  Why not also correct the below-sea-level problem by simply raising the ground level ?  We certainly have better tools now than Galveston did in 1900!

We could start in the lowest, worst parts of New Orleans.  Buildings worth saving could be jacked up so that dirt could be filled in underneath.  Those not worth the cost could simply be knocked down, covered over with dirt and buried where they are.  (What a great treasure for future archeologists to dig up in a century or two!)

The higher parts of New Orleans could be preserved as is.  The rest could be lifted out of its permanent danger zone.  Instead of disasters waitiing to happen, buildings could be safe on ground raised to a higher level.  Having a house or business in New Orleans would no longer be a toss-up between prosperity and bankruptcy.

If the old Galvestonians could do it, why can't New Orleans?

(Hat tip to Robert Martin)

Chinese Policewoman Nurses Earthquake Babies

"Madonna of China": Jiang Xiaoujuan, young provincial policewoman

                    (Image from themoderatevoice.com)

It is a beautiful affirmation of the goodness ordinary humans can show, especially in a great disaster.  This Chinese policewoman is a nursing mother who has also taken on several nursing infants in addition to her own.  This story appeared on the front page, above the fold with this full color photo, in a leading Spanish newspaper.  It also appeared at http://themoderatevoice.com/society/family/babies/19853/madonna-of-china-chinese-policewoman-saves-orphan-babies-lives-by-breastfeeding-them/ , where the writer says:

Jiang is 29 years old and is the young mother of a little baby herself. Her child is under six months old, and is still being breastfed.

When the earthquake that killed over 50,000 people in China occurred, Jiang’s town was devastated. She put on her uniform and went out looking to help. She first found one weeping baby, and then another young infant… and took them to her breast.

She now is nursing five orphan infants whose mothers died in the earthquake. And she is nursing four other newborns whose mothers are homeless and traumatized… when a nursing mother is severely shocked, her milk flow, you might say, is shocked too and can stop flowing

....we stand with many mothers worldwide who salute Jiang Xiaojuan profoundly.

It’s a mystery women don’t often speak of publicly, what it’s like to nourish another human being… or many… from one’s own blood and bones. It is one of the greatest honors in the world.

I think, despite the restrictive and suspicious regime of China, it’s people like Jiang who really represent the true spirit of modern China, the compassionate soul.

And here is CNNs story, at http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/05/22/china.breastfeed/

Police officer Jiang Xiaojuan, 29, was feeding nine babies at one point.

A Chinese police officer is being hailed as a hero after taking it upon herself to breast-feed several infants who were separated from their mothers or orphaned by China's devastating earthquake.

Officer Jiang Xiaojuan, 29, the mother of a 6-month-old boy, responded to the call of duty and the instincts of motherhood when the magnitude-7.9 quake struck on May 12.

"I am breast-feeding, so I can feed babies. I didn't think of it much," she said. "It is a mother's reaction and a basic duty as a police officer to help."

The death toll in the earthquake jumped Thursday to more than 51,000, and more than 29,000 are missing, according to government figures. Thousands of children have been orphaned; many others have mothers who simply can't feed them.

At one point, Jiang was feeding nine babies.

"Some of the moms were injured; their fathers were dead ... five of them were orphans. They've gone away to an orphanage now," she said.

She still feeds two babies, including Zhao Lyuyang, son of a woman who survived the quake but whose breast milk stopped flowing because of the traumatic conditions.

"We walked out of the mountains for a long time. I hadn't eaten in days when I got here, and my milk was not enough," said that mother, Zhao Zong Jun. "She saved my baby. I thank her so much. I can't express how I feel."

Liu Rong, another mother whose breast milk stopped in the trauma, was awed by Jiang's kindness.

"I am so touched because she has her own baby, but she fed the disaster babies first," Liu said. "If she hadn't fed my son, he wouldn't have had enough to eat."

Jiang has became a celebrity, followed by local media and proclaimed on a newspaper front page as "China's Mother No. 1."

She's embarrassed by the fuss.

"I think what I did was normal," she said. "In a quake zone, many people do things for others. This was a small thing, not worth mentioning."

There has been a huge outpouring of support from families who want to adopt babies orphaned by the quake. But that process takes time, and there are mouths to feed.

Jiang misses her own son, who's being cared for through the emergency by in-laws in another town, but she is aware of the new connections she's made.

"I feel about these kids I fed just like my own. I have a special feeling for them. They are babies in a disaster."

Getting Rid of Christians in Myanmar

                                   (Image from economist.com)

(From Chuck Colson's Breakpoint today, at www.breakpoint.org:)

The news from Myanmar/Burma keeps getting worse.  As of May 11, nearly 300,000 were dead or missing.  The UN said 1.2 - 1.9 million were struggling to survive after the storm.

But the conduct of the Burmese junta is even more appalling.  It actively hinders relief operations.  After it seized food aid last week, the UN had to stop sending it.

...a week after the cyclone, the junta was still refusing to let relief workers into the country, insisting that countries send only supplies and not personnel. 

The junta eventually relented, but only after stamping their own names on the boxes, and not soon enough to prevent a catastrophe.

Their intransigence may have already doomed a generation of Burmese children, according to international aid agencies. They warned of epidemics of “apocalyptic proportions.” The death toll from the epidemics and starvation could exceed the death toll from the storm itself.

The junta does not value the lives of its people.

Burma's Christians know this better than anyone.  The junta has used...

...ethnic cleansing of Christian minority groups, destruction of villages, forced conversions and even rape and murder...“to create a uniform society in which the race and language is Burmese and the only accepted religion is Buddhism.”  (bolding added)

The mainstream media has mostly ignored this story.  Most Westerners do not even know that Burma has a substantial Christian population.

We ought to be at the forefront of alleviating the suffering of the Burmese people.

But at the same time, we ought to point out to the world that while cyclones do not discriminate between Buddhists and Christians, this junta does.

And our nation ought to be mobilizing world opinion to bring down this oppressive regime.

UN Says Myanmar Junta Stealing Aid

(Image from Breitbart.com)

"UN Halts Aid to Myanmar After Junta Seizes Supplies," at http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D90I3ORG0&show_article=1

Why would they do that?

When there is a major disaster in a poor country, the major obstacle in getting aid  in is usually that country's government.  Very often, it steals the aid supplies and sells them for its own profit.  If somewhat democratic, it is simply corrupt.  If a dictatorship, the corruption is worse.

Such governments use the plight of their people to extract aid from the rest of the world.  They hold their own suffering people hostage.  They drag their feet in allowing aid to enter.  The anguish of a watching world grows.  Countries become more frantic to deliver aid.  They become more willing to pay bribes and allow considerable theft, just to get at least some aid to the suffering.  It is a common form of blackmail.

This is what is happening in Myanmar.  The dictatorship is one of the most closed in the world.  It keeps Myanmar an almost-closed country, to keep it tightly controlled. 

The AP reports this morning:

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) - A U.N. official says the World Food Program is suspending cyclone aid to Myanmar because its government seized supplies flown into the country.

He says the WFP has no choice but to suspend the shipments until the matter is resolved.

WFP spokesman Paul Risley said Friday that all "the food aid and equipment that we managed to get in has been confiscated." The shipment included 38 tons of high-energy biscuits.

The UN already had voiced concerns that the junta wanted supplies, but would not allow aid workers to come in with it.  Aid givers will not give supplies without its own workers, to make sure the supplies go to those suffering  and are not simply confiscated and sold by corrupt governments.  See  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24514879/page/2/.

Mealwhile, salt water still stands in much of the delta, which supplies most of Myanmar's rice. This harvest was lost.  There will not be enough rice this year.  The land cannot be planted again until the salt has leached out.

Bodies are everwhere - people and animals.  The government will not allow them to be collected and burnt, apparently in the hope that the size of the death count will not be known.  Some aid agencies estimate that the death toll could reach 500,000 if disease takes hold.

Available water is not only too contaminated to drink, but too salty.  Food is disappearing.  Mass disease looms.

The U.S. navy waits offshore, with its huge capacity to produce fresh water.  Aid supplies are standing on tarmacs of all surrounding countries, with air transport ready.  The U.S., the largest provider of air support in the world, is waiting nearby, but forbidden to enter.  All but the U.N. and a few private agencies are kept out. 

Now, after seeing all its aid stolen by the government, even the UN is halting its aid.

The tragedy grows.

100,000 Possible Dead in Myanmar

                                (Image from msnbc.com)

The military dictatorship is still keeping most aid out of Myanmar.  They have kept control all these years by keeping Myanmar isolated from the outside world. 


Almost the total lower delta region, the main rice-growing area of Myanmar, is still under water.  Supplies of food and water are running out.  Aid workers worry that epidemics may follow soon.   This is the worst cyclone disaster since Bangaladesh in 1970, which killed up to 500,000 people. 

From http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24488385&GT1=43001..

22,000 Dead, 41,000 Missing in Myanmar

Again , it was the storm surge, 12 feet high, that did most of the damage.  No time, no place to run from it. 

There was also a lack of adequate warning.

Over a million homeless.  Huge trees, some 9 stories high with trunks 5-6 feet thick, fell over, crushing everything in their path.  The storm affected up to half of the country's population, hitting in its most heavily-populated zone.

The U.S.Navy  has 3 disaster response ships standing off shore, with drinking water, plastic tarps, etc. ready.  But the military distatorship is refusing to let them come in.  It is hoped that the junta will let the charitable NGOs which  already there function, such as Save the Children and many others.

Many of us are looking for ways to help, and praying for the vistims.

Saving People from Fire on the 101st Floor

The horrific scenes of people jumping from the fires of the Twin Towers on 9/11 are deeply etched into our memories.  But there is new hope now that in future sky-scraper fires, people on the top floors can be saved.  2 1/2 minutes.

(Go here for more information on this new rescue technology.)

(Hat Tip to Robert Martin)

"SHOOT ME FIRST" - 13 Year Old Amish Girl

(Image from visitlawrencecounty.com)

(Hat Tip, blog "Coalition of the Swilling," here.) 

According to ABC News, here, the oldest of the Amish girls shot to death, Marian Fisher, stepped forward and pled "Shoot me first."  She was apparently trying to buy time for the others.  Then her 11 year old sister Barbie asked "Shoot me second," according to friends of the Fisher family.

Barbie survived.  When she was taken off a ventilator Tuesday, her first words were "Where's Marian?"  When her family told her Marian was dead, Barbie insisted on going home to see the body.  Despite being shot in the hip and shoulder, she "really wanted to see her sister one last time."

Rita Rhoades, a midwife who had delivered some of the girls when they were born, said that just before killing himself, Roberts said three words - "pray for me."  Her account of Robert's final words matched another source in the New York Times. 

"'He asked the children to pray for him, and that's kind of interesting because he said he hated God,' Rhoads said.  'He must have recognized the faith in them, God in them.'"

Today Marian Fisher, 13, was buried, along with Namoi Rose Ebersole, 7, and sisters Mary Liz Miller, 8 and Lena Miller, 7.  Anna Mae Atoltzfus, 12, will be buried Friday.

The killer's widow, Marie Roberts, plans to meet with the girl's families in a couple of weeks.  She does not feel emotionally prepared yet.  But her grandfather, Lloyd Welk, met Tuesday with the families. They told him "there were no hard feelings.  There is forgiveness."

Typhoon Kills 50, A Million Evacuated

Typhoon Chanchu hit the south China coast yesterday.  Today, there are fears that the death toll could rise drastically.  Some were killed when mudslides buried some houses and others when their homes collapsed on top of them.

"Thousands of people evacuated from fishing boats and low-lying areas were staying with relatives, in tents, or in schools and government warehouses," here.

Three Vietnamese fishing boats were lost with all 27 on board.  Three other boats, however, found shelter on an island, saving all 67 on board.  Some lives were also lost to flooding in Taiwan.

The world-financial center of Hong Kong was spared the full effects of Typhoon Chanchu after it swerved East toward the China coast at the last minute.

TYPHOON SLAMS CHINA'S COAST

          (Image from News Guangdong)

As Typhoon Chanchu looms off China's coast, 500,000 evacuated from one of China's largest manufacturing centers in Guangdong Province.  Over 50,000 ships have been docked.  Just north in Fujian Province, a similar number of people and ships were affected, here.  Airplane flights have been cancelled.  Winds are building to 98 mph. in the eye of the cyclone, which is expected to hit later today.

Chanchu swept over the Philippines earlier in the week, killing 37.  Yesterday it caused high waves in Southern Japan, which swept 3 male 17 year old students off a beach and out to sea.  It was expected to hit Hong Kong, but swerved East at the last minute toward the Guangdong Province.

BEST EARTHQUAKE PROTECTION? PROSPERITY

Today Ben Blankenship, our guest blogger, writes on the Pakistan/India/Afganistan/Kasmir earthquake.  His summary - National prosperity is the best protection from disasters; and freedom is what is needed to achieve national prosperity.  Now - here's Ben!

"Gerry, as you were saying...

"Pakistan authorities report that 30,000 people have perished in the earthquake that has devastated parts of Pakistan, India and Afganistan.  That must be, at best, a very crude estimate that could be wildly off in either direction.

"A large majority of earthquake fatalities and injuries occur because buildings collapse.  In one horrifying instance in Pakistan, 250 girls died and another 500 were injured when their school collapsed.  In developed countries like the U.S., earthquakes take far less of a human toll because of superior construction techniques. 

"This is one of countless instances where prosperity, which is so often and unfairly maligned, saves lives.  Here's another.  I haven't seen the statistics, but I'm sure someone has figured out how many people in the developed world are saved from entirely preventable deaths by the water quality we take for granted.  The figure is undoubtedly in the millions.

"There is no mystery to sound construction and clean water.  The only requirement is prosperity.  And the only requirement for prosperity is freedom.  This is not the most important reason why our foreign policy should be centered on promoting freedom abroad.  But it is certainly on the list.  Helping promote free enterprise in the underdeveloped world will do far more good than any amount of foreign aid."

LIVES SAVED FROM KATRINA AND RITA BY U.S. PROSPERITY

We got lucky, here in Austin and almost everywhere else in Texas.  Rita went mostly somewhere else.  We are concerned about the people she pounded, working to help them and continuing to pray for them.

Saturday morning the roads from Austin to Houston were packed again, but they were going home.  Galveston can keep people out: there is only one bridge in.  But Houston has thousands of ways to sneak in.  If people want to go back, Houston really cannot stop them.

There is a big festival in Austin this weekend, with 65,000 tickets sold, and people had hotel rooms reserved.  Hotels had to ask the Texas evacuees to leave because their rooms were reserved for others.  It looks like many of them decided just to go home.  Word is there are no hotel rooms available in Texas, Oklahoma or Louisiana anyhow.  So there literally may have been nowhere else for them to go, and they didn't want to wait for something else to be arranged - which would not be easy to do for some 2.5 million evacuees!

My sister (in the NW corner of the Houston area) said Saturday morning that evacuees were coming back in at the rate of 10,000 an hour.  She also said their power went off at 3:30 a.m. Friday night.  They were told there were 750,000 homes without power, and that it would take 2 weeks to restore power.  But today, Sunday, only 300,000 homes remained without power.  (Not bad, Houston!)   

You can literally watch us all learning daily and hourly from Katrina and Rita, from the President on down.  It will make us better prepared to handle the next big one, whether natural disaster or attack. 

It also fits what I wrote earlier (see "THE BEST DEFENSE AGAINST NATURAL DISASTERS? PROSPERITY!, under the category "Katrina/New Orleans," August 29, 2005.)  National prosperity is the best protection against disasters.  A more prosperous country benefits from better early warning, buildings and other infrastructure built to higher codes, better protection from disasters, more and better-trained responders to disasters, more money for rebuilding, and everything done faster than if the country were poorer. 

We cannot stop natural disasters and many man-made ones.  But by working to make this nation and others more prosperous, we also help save innumerable lives in future disasters.  Promoting national prosperity, here and abroad, is one of the most caring, humane things we can do.

WHAT KATRINA REFUGEES NEED MOST? JOBS!

Many American refugees from Katrina are already arriving in other cities.  I know of three shelters in Texas already, in Houston, San Antonio and the covered Burger Statium here in Austin.  Arkansas has some too, and more are coming.

As an old hand at helping poor people move up out of bad situations, I want to make a suggestion to all those trying to help these storm victims.  Whether they were poor or not before, most of them are now.  What they need is to get back on their feet somehow, soon.  Handouts just won't achieve that.  They need jobs.  The only way out of such a deep hole is to work your way out.  That can only start with a job.

But aren't they too stressed, too depressed, too much in shock and grief?  Actually, a job would help them with all that.  The great psychologist Rollo May said that the only cure for grief is time and work.  Work is healing!  Being unemployed often leads to feeling worthless.  A job brings confidence, a sense of being worth something.  It faces us toward the future and brings hope.  And the money to apply toward our hopes.

But do we have enough jobs for them in America?  Before I stop laughing at the idea, let me put on my old economist's hat for a minute.  Yes - there are plenty of jobs in America!  Presently we are at 5% unemployment, or more-than-full employment.  Full employment is defined as about 5.6% unemployment.  (That level is where those who want to work are working, except for those temporarily moving from one job to another.  For instance, worker B is busy applying for the job worker C just left, while worker A is preparing to apply for the job worker B just left.  This movement between jobs is called "frictional unemployment."  It is a normal part of the work world, involving about 5.6% of the workforce at any one time.  It is not the same as true unemployment.  That is why 5.6% unemployment is considered "full employment.")

The U.S. economy, after all, is the one that has somehow absorbed around 11 million illegal immigrants into the job market, yet still has more-than-full employment!  It is the economy that continually outsources more and more jobs overseas, while still continuing to increase the total jobs in the U.S.  It is the economy that bounced back from a 2000 recession made sharply deeper after 9/11, in just 2 to 3 years.  It happens to be the economy that fuels all the other economies in the world.  And we don't have enough jobs to employ all these refugees?

Excuse me, but that is just silly.  If anyone tries to make such a claim, the only rational response would be mirth and amazement.  After all, there were only some 500,000 people in all of New Orleans.  That many would not make a serious dimple in our workforce.

As an example, when the unemployment rate was much higher, at 7-8% in California during 1988-92, we made the families in our homeless shelter get jobs.  Impossible?  Heartless?  Well, not one of them (out of a few thousand) failed to get a job.  Please!

A big risk is that the Katrina homeless may never want to leave their new shelters.  After the great earthquake of 1989 in the California Bay Area, some of our San Jose Family Shelter staff went to Watsonville to see what was happening in the tent city there.  We had trouble believing what we learned.  After a year in the tent city, everything was ready for them to leave.  And they did not want to leave!  Some were planning to actually refuse to go.

Why?  They had become dependent.  They had gotten used to having food, water, shelter, everything they needed, brought directly to them.  They did not have to lift a finger for any of it.  They also had formed a new, though artificial, community.  They did not want to leave it.

Who are the thousands needing help because of Katrina?  They are most likely to be the very poorest of New Orleans and the other stricken communities.  The more prosperous, the ones with cars, are most of the ones who got out on time.

New Orleans was already thought of as socially "the last helpless city in American."  (See Nicole Galinas, former resident of New Orleans, at City Journal, www.city-journal.org.)   It had a crime rate 10 times higher than the rest of America.  She writes of an economy completely dependent on tourism, with no real competent government or civil infrastructure.  The best and most affluent corporations and people had fled for years, leaving behind a population largely dependent on the government.  The 10% or so who stayed in New Orleans to wait out the hurricane were largely the ones without cars, mostly from this dependent population.  (HT to James Tarranto, Best of the Web Today, Wall Street Journal, 9-1-05.)

These Katrina refugees need jobs.  They need, not further dependency, but independence.  Those who help them can help the able-bodied among them best by prodding them into jobs, and by requiring them to work in order to continue to receive help.  Anything short of that will also fall short of true compassion for these stricken people.

There is a guidebook for helping the poor in this way.  I wrote it out of my long experience, but never published it.  Right now, I pledge to get it up online, where anyone can read it for free, just as fast as I can.  Anyone planning to work with Katrina refugees is going to need it, or something like it!  Until then,  God bless all of you as you try to help your neighbors - the refugees from Katrina.

THE BEST PROTECTION FROM NATURAL DISASTERS? PROSPERITY!

Watching the devastation from hurricane Katrina, and the rescue and restoration efforts afterwards, we should remember how much was lost in big natural disasters in other countries.  The Tsunami tragedy less than a year ago; the recent floods in Bangaladesh; the earthquakes in Iran; and others.  Especially, we should note how much less the loss of life and property is here during Katrina, and think about the reasons why.

The unavoidable answer is that in natural disasters, it is mostly national prosperity that makes the biggest difference.  Early-warning systems, such as did not exist in many poor countries hard hit by the tsumanis.  Preparation for disasters, with disaster-readiness equipment like generators for hospitals.  Personnel already trained and drilled.  Local and national teams already equipped to move in quickly, restore the most vital services such as power and water.  Quick restoration of order, prevention of looting.  Trained, well-equipped rescue specialists.  Quick, excellent medical care for the injured. 

Then the national means to rebuild, with really amazing ability and quickness, what was lost.  Good insurance and financial help to assist that rebuilding.  Plenty of people willing and able to do it.  Then the ability to learn from each earthquake, flood, fire, hurricane or tornado, drought, how to better withstand the damage the next time.  Then the ability to build that new knowledge into the infrastructure.

This may seem so obvious as to not be worth mentioning.  But it is important to notice that it is prosperity that is key to preventing loss of life and property, and to restoring what was lost.  Why?  Because knowing the power of national prosperity to save lives and property helps us to understand that it is not purely selfish.  Not at all.  Building national prosperity is one of the most important things that we can to do save lives.  It is also one of the most important things we can do to help the poor, since the poor suffer much more from natural disasters  than the others. 

It is also one of the very most important things that we can do to help the poor in poor countries.  Everything we can promote to increase their national prosperity - capitalism, free trade, freedom from corrupt and thieving governments who steal from the country and increase its poverty, freedom from systems that stifle individual freedoms to start small businesses - all these not only help the poor in those countries rise above poverty.  They also help save their lives in the next big natural disaster they have.

In short: capitalism, free trade, economic freedom and freedom from oppressive, corrupt governments not only help the poor vastly more than handouts; they also help save their lives when the next huge tsunamis, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters hit.

Handouts are important when disaster strikes.  But they matter less than having reached greater national prosperity.