Have they Wellstoned Walter Maestri??

Does anyone remember Mr. Maestri?? He was the Emergency Management official from the New Orleans area who was on the NOW episode that so clearly stated that New Orleans was doomed unless the levy system was totally overhauled. I couldn't find any statement of any kind from him since the hurricane hit. It would seem that he would be all over the air wave screaming, "I told you so!" Does this seem strange to anybody else?

:shrug:

:evilfrown:

it makes me fear for his safety. He was being the chicken little of the delta. No one was listening. Now we don't hear a word. It just seem awfully suspicious, she says, donning her tinfoil hat.

was the correct term for a slander for when you are still living. It's only when you die and they attack you for being too partisan that you will have been "Wellstoned".

think being silenced for your vociferous beliefs.

They've been very adamant saying "How can Bush say that? Walter has been screaming about this for years?"

Now, since earlier this week I haven't heard anything from him...

we can hope for the best. I've been reading too many cold war spy novels lately. I have visions of someone walking up to him and asking him, "Mr. Maestri?" "Yes." And then it's a quick shot to the temple with a silencer-equipper pistol. God, I need some sleep.

Aaron Broussard said on MTP this morning that the mother of the head of Jefferson Parish's emergency management office drowned in a nursing home waiting for rescue.

Isn't that Maestri?:shrug:

I couldn't remember his title. Maybe he is just too consumed in his own grief to be in the media right now.

Then they had some guy on 60 minutes tonight saying even if they spent a billion dollars it wouldn't have made a difference because they needed to start 20 years ago, I smell bullshit.

...negative about BushCo, Inc., its bullshit. But if CBS says something to protect BushCo., Inc., its fact? Got it.

Walter Maestri, emergency management director of Jefferson Parish.

They do refer to his title, but don't mention his mother. I'd really hate to think this, since the man knew the dangers, better than most, and certainly wouldn't have left his mother to face them.:-(

See my previous post #12...:shrug:

A Hurricane of Consequences

By Stephen Zunes, Foreign Policy in Focus. Posted September 4, 2005.

<snip>
The Iraq war has cost the federal government more than $200 billion thus far, resulting in cutbacks in a number of emergency preparedness projects which appear to have lessened the ability of Louisiana authorities to cope with the hurricane, including providing charter busses to complete the evacuation of the city before the storm struck. Furthermore, Walter Maestri, the emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, which includes New Orleans' western suburbs, noted in June of last year that anticipated funding to strengthen the levees had been diverted to pay for the war.
<snip>

http://www.alternet.org/story/25041/

edited to refer to #12...

The Decatur Daily: Opinion

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2005

EDITORIAL

Drowning New Orleans; was tragedy preventable?

"As the water recedes," said Walter Maestri of the New Orleans area, "we expect to find a lot of dead bodies."

Maestri, an emergency management official, spoke those words four years ago in a Scientific American article, which predicted the kind of disaster that hit the Gulf Coast last week.

The danger has been growing for decades with unheeded pleas for help from Congress.

The Mississippi River built the delta plain that forms Southeastern Louisiana over centuries by depositing sediment every year during spring floods. Although the drying silt sank, the next flood rebuilt the plain, according to the October 2001 article.

http://www.decaturdaily.com/decaturdaily/opinion/editorials/050904a.shtml

edited for typo

I'd read Walter Maestri's prediction of what to expect with a hurricane of this strength...:-(

"Maestri, an emergency management official, spoke those words four years ago in a Scientific American article"

still can't find a quote from post-Katrina.

But he predicted this and stuck to his story as recently as June of this year...:shrug:

I fear for the guy. :scared:

By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
Published: 04 September 2005

<snip> "No one can say they did not see it coming," reported the The Times-Picayune from New Orleans this week. The newspaper published a five-part series predicting the disaster five years ago. Officials and experts last week wearily recalled their attempts to make the government take action. "It's frustrating to have planned, begged and pleaded that this could happen," said Walter Maestri, emergency management director of the now submerged Jefferson Parish. "They would say, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah.' Well it's here now." <snip>

Plans to provide shelter for victims and evacuate the Superdome, started after last year's Hurricane Pam exercise, were abandoned. Eric Tolbert, chief of disaster response at Fema until last February, said this was because funding dried up. "What you are seeing is revealing weaknesses in the state, local and federal levels," he said last week. "They have been weakened by diversion into terrorism."

Mr Maestri, the Jefferson Parish emergency director, added: "It appears that money has been moved in the President's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq. I suppose that's the price we pay."

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article310195.ece

http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_Times-Picayune/archives/2005_09.html#076438

Jefferson Parish Emergency Preparedness Director Walter Maestri said Friday night that the Federal Emergency Management Agency reneged on a promise to begin relieving county emergency preparedness staffers 48 hours after Hurricane Katrina hit the New Orleans metropolitan area.

Maestri’s staff has been working almost around the clock since Katrina approached the Louisiana coastline on Sunday. Today, the staff is
expected to finally switch to a 12 hours on/12 hours off schedule, he said,
adding that they’re both tired and demoralized by the lack of assistance from federal officials.

....

check it out, he's pissed and exhausted and working non-stop. I feel better now.

But we still aren't sure whose elderly mother drowned so unnecessarily and tragically.:shrug:

Here's the original article I read, mentioning Walter Maestri, also from September 2002, posted 8/28, when we first knew that NO was probably lost. (Page 2);(

<snip>
And just across the Mississippi River, Walter Maestri is struggling to help New Orleans prepare. Maestri is the czar of public emergencies in Jefferson Parish (that's the county that sprawls across a third of the metropolitan area). He points to a map of the region on the wall of his command post.

"A couple of days ago," explains Maestri, "We actually had an exercise where we brought a fictitious Category Five Hurricane into the metropolitan area."

When the computer models showed Walter Maestri what would happen after a hurricane hit New Orleans, he wrote big letters on the map: 'KYAGB—kiss your ass good bye.'

The map is covered with arrows and swirls in erasable marker. They show how the fictitious hurricane crossed Key West and then smacked into New Orleans.

When the computer models showed Maestri what would happen next, he wrote big letters on the map, all in capitals.

"KYAGB—kiss your ass good bye," reads Maestri.

"Because," says Maestri, "anyone who was here when that storm came across was gone—it was body-bag time. We think 40,000 people could lose their lives in the metropolitan area."
<snip>

http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/wetlands/hurricane1.html

in a nursing home. But I only caught the end. However, I'm sure that this was just an ordinary citizen, and was probably even a different nursing home, since the timing was wrong. There are so many sad stories, here, and these are only two of them. There are literally tens of thousands, and this definitely eclipses the death toll of 9/11.;(

Walter Maestri is really still with us. I missed the first few minutes of the 11pm live telecast, so just caught the Pacific feed at 2am, but he was the very first guest/interview, excellent and speaking out about what they knew and the failures to prepare for it. I'm going to try and tape the Saturday repeat and anybody who's interested should try to catch this. It's the initial segment of Bill Maher on HBO. Wow, this guy is THAT good and still on top of things. I was sure impressed...:D