Winter Patriot Community Blog

I had originally meant this to be a forum post (where it most likely belongs) but it was so long I decided to post it to my blog.

Has anyone else noticed the lack of post Ike coverage on the CMSM?

My daughter and I watched much of the CNN coverage of the approach and landing of Hurricane Ike last Friday night/Saturday morning. On Saturday when it was reported that a military task force (that had been pre-positioned before the hurricane hit) was headed to the Houston area I half joked that once they got there the press coverage would be shut down. We kept checking sporadically during the rest of the weekend and into Monday to see the extent of the damage but there was very little coverage. Are we missing coverage of Ike up here in Canada? CNN programming for the remainder of the weekend was revolving reruns of the Sarah Palin/Joe Biden biographies plus a couple of other ridiculous political yak fests by assorted pundits. They had probably 10 - 20 reporters positioned around the hardest hit areas on Friday and after Saturday morning all they had to broadcast for the rest of the weekend was reruns of the previous week's presidential news?
Last night I did a bit of checking for internet coverage. There are lots and lots of stories in the print media but most that I read seemed to be of the boiler plate variety listing statistics and paraphrasing the same points over and over again. There are a handful of survivor stories with more trickling in today. A commenter on one of the articles I read (sorry can't find the link again ) was convinced there was a media blackout on post Ike coverage. She said that her sister's house was under 20 feet of water yet the news was only reporting a surge of 6 -12 feet in the area where it was situated.

Some things that are bothering me about this coverage (and lack of it):

- Official death toll:
Friday night and Saturday morning it was reported that emergency officials were receiving thousands and thousands of calls. According to subsequent reports there have been somewhere around 2000 rescues. This is a lot, however officials estimate that up to 20,000 people stayed behind in Galveston (some reporting as many as 40,000) and as many as 140,00 stayed in mandatory evacuation areas. The highest death toll I have seen to date is 40 with most of those being from outside the Houston area. Where are these people? What happened to them? Some are making their way into emergency facilities but the numbers don't seem to correspond to the large numbers that reportedly stayed behind.

- People not leaving the mandatory evacuation areas:
Most of the talk in the comments section of reports I have read are railing against the stupidity of the people that stayed behind in the mandatory evacuation areas. Many people are suggesting they be fined and some are calling on officials to arrest parents for child endangerment. I am wondering why so many stayed behind. I don't think we are hearing the real story. It doesn't make sense why these people didn't leave. Yes, some were just too stubborn or stupid to leave or didn't have the money or wanted to protect their belongings, but that many of them?
I have read stories where the evacuation wasn't as smooth and organized as the news has lead us to believe.
Houston residents were advised to hunker down and ride out the storm at home. Were some areas flooded where residents were told to stay at home?
Residents on the Bolivar Pennisula tried to leave but were caught by early flood waters on Friday morning (4ft covering the highway) and couldn't get out. They called for help numerous times but didn't get any. See here.
Houston is home to a large population of illegal alliens. Although there was supposedly an amnesty for illegals how many of them stayed because they didn't believe the officials? I read where people that were evacuated during Gustav where getting arrested when they had their id's checked.

Ike evacuation: 'Hurricane amnesty' to help Gulf's illegal immigrants But increased raids this past year mean that many undocumented may choose to stay in the storm zone. By Patrik Jonsson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor from the September 12, 2008 edition

- Coverage of damage to oil refineries and the price of gas:
Saturday morning our gas prices increased 11 cents a litre (39 cents a gallon). The is the largest single iincrease I can remember. Gas in our area now costs $1.49 a litre ($5.29 a gallon) which I notice is much higher than prices in the Houston area. The price of oil the same day was dropping to somewhere around $100 a barrel. Besides the fact that my knee jerk reaction is to be totally pissed about paying these prices when I live in a country that is swimming in natural resources including oil, natural gas, water (for hydro electricity), coal etc., I am wondering why this increase is so high after Ike. How much damage was done to the refineries and platforms? Was it catastrophic? I don't know because there just hasn't been a lot of coverage of it. I did read reports about four oil platforms spotted floating around the Gulf of Mexico and saw some pictures of flooded pumps at oil refineries. Curiously, my brother works for a Chevron oil refinery and he has been telling us all summer that the top management keeps whining they are losing money in the refining end of the business - (but making obscene profits in all other areas of the business ). H-m-m-m??

- Storm surge forecast to be 20 ft. but reported after hurricane to have been only 6 - 12 ft.:
I really think there is something fishy going on here. As I noted above according to eye witness accounts the Bolivar Pennisula had 4 ft of water on the road Friday morning (many hours before the outer bands of the hurricane even hit the coast) and there was already flooding in many of the other coastal areas. There are accounts of houses being under 20 ft of water and flooding from the storm surge reached from the Florida coast to Corpus Christi and beyond. What happened? Are we supposed to believe that the slight jog Ike took just before it struck the coast was the reason the storm surge wasn't as bad as forescast?

- Hazardous Chemicals:
I don't have the link but I read one commenter's account that a hazardous chemical (biological?) plant in the greater Houston area was under water and officials didn't want that information getting out. Did anyone else hear anything about this?

- Task Force Ike:
Finally, task force Ike moved into the greater Houston area Saturday morning. Since that time there has been only limited "talking point" type coverage of the damage done. What's happening down there?

(Also, I found it interesting that the city of Houston had cleaned up all the glass debris in the downtown area by Saturday afternoon - pre-planning and efficiency perhaps or maybe 'out of sight, out of mind'?)

UPDATE 1:

20,000 people chose to stay behind in Galveston, of those 40% live in the West End - which is outside the seawall. That's 8000 people. There are little to no reports of the damage in the west end. The Galveston mayor referred to the damage to the West End as devastating.
(Correction: 18/09/08 - 40% of the people do not live in the West End. It represents 40% of the tax base. Many of the homes there are vacation homes [same on Bolivar Pennisula]. So, most likely there were not a lot people that stayed behind in those areas. Most of those estimated 20,000 people likely were situated in the areas behind the seawall that sustained the least amount of damage and flooding.)

This thread at KHOU.com a local Houston station is reporting that FEMA is blocking cell phone coverage in the Galveston area. There are lots of other interesting comments and discussions going on there. People are also posting asking for info on relatives they can't contact.

From Above Top Secret:

And then there is this: