I think horseman number three of four has just arrived on the scene:  the city of New Orleans is on fire.  And there’s no water pressure, and no equipment, to put it out.

So they’re calling the city of New Orleans at the EPA, as reported by Wonkette:

We’re naming it Lake George, ‘cause it’s his frickin fault.

Rumors are running rampant.  No one seems to know what’s actually happening, and what’s just talk.  But the chaos seems to be spreading outside New Orleans.

More below the fold.

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Many, many things, but I’ll only name three:

10,000 members of the Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama National Guards are in Iraq, and so are unable to mobilize for this domestic crisis.

Coastal erosion has resulted in the reduction of the buffer between New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico from 150 miles of marshland to 60 miles; because of this, hurricanes have less time to lose strength over land before striking the city.  Much of this erosion is due to offshore drilling, as well as to the rising seas that are resulting from global warming.

The budget for shoring up and protecting New Orleans’s levee system was slashed to almost nothing in 2003, as the administration looked for ways to fund the war in Iraq.

Watching CNN’s coverage of the disaster in New Orleans, the thing that isn’t being said by most observers comes screaming out of the screen:  New Orleans has a majority-black population.  And there’s a very strong correlation between poverty and race in the city.  And the folks who didn’t leave the city—the folks who didn’t leave because they couldn’t afford to leave, or because they had no transportation, or even because it seemed like a better idea to stay put and cling desperately to what little is theirs—these people are the poor, and they are, in the vast majority, black.

Most of the dead are black.  Most of the stranded are black.  Most of both are exceedingly poor.  And this is not incidental.

Much was made yesterday of the AP and AFP’s senses of who is a looter and who is not.  And I’m quite convinced that if such a natural disaster happened in a city where the population left behind was white, the media would have far less interest in the looting question at all.

But I think that the unconcsious race bias endemic to this country is playing itself out in other ways as well.  More below the fold.

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Thank god for Texas.

Texas governor Rick Perry earlier today announced that he has cleared the schedule of the Astrodome in Houston through December, and is opening it as a long-term shelter, welcoming all those who are currently being evacuated from the Superdome, as well as those who’ve already taken temporary shelter elsewhere.  The state of Texas, he announced, will not merely put a roof over these displaced people’s heads, but will feed them and provide any medical care they require.

What’s more, he’s also ordered Texas schools to open their doors to the children among these displaced folks, saying that they should be considered residents of the state of Texas as long as they’re there.  Perry said, moreover, that the displaced are welcome as long as they want to stay.  “These are our neighbors,” he said.  “These are people in need and Texas is going to do everything we can in our power to help.”

Thank you, Governor Perry, from the bottom of my heart.

Is how the rest of the world can be going about its business so nonchalantly.  Like BT, I’ve got the peculiar kind of obsession with what’s happening that, I suppose, only someone with such deep personal attachments to the area can have.  Folks around me make all the appropriate sympathetic noises when I bring it up, but it’s clear that they’re a little baffled by my level of panic.

Again, more below the fold.

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Governor Kathleen Blanco is ordering everyone who didn’t evacuate from New Orleans before the storm to evacuate now; she’s sending in buses and boats, and getting everybody out.

Ranting and panic, below the fold.

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The news out of New Orleans is perversely getting worse instead of better; a two-block long breach in the levee surrounding Lake Pontchartrain resulted in water pouring into the city since late yesterday.  According to Governor Kathleen Blanco, reports have flood water levels at five feet in downtown New Orleans, and as high as 12 feet in East New Orleans, the 9th Ward, and St. Bernard Parish.

There are also reports of bodies floating in the flood waters, though there are as yet no confirmed deaths there.  And hundreds of people may yet be trapped in their attics, unable to escape or to draw attention from rescue crews.

[UPDATE, 12.50 pm:  I can’t believe I failed to mention, in this litany of disaster, that martial law has been declared in the city of New Orleans.  Martial law.  Unbelievable.]

The folks who are coming here looking for info on Matt Taibbi have led me to his most recent New York Press column, on the Ohio voting irregularities of 2004.  Provocative reading, if still depressing.  And the promise, in the end, of more to come.