Katrina Disaster

[CrazyyAngel]

This is really getting hard to watch, hard to even think about. Buildings in New Orleans are burning; natural gas lines have ruptured beneath the streets and the gas has ignited, burning on top of the water. Filth, disease, death and destruction. It's like watching people trapped in a sinking ocean liner going down before your eyes.

And then, the coverage breaks for a commercial: financial planners, toilet bowl cleaners ("And it kills germs, to protect my family!"), athletic shoes. It's just surreal.

How do these people have time to give news conferences and talk with Larry King?

Yeah ... even for me, and I am not even a citizen of the US. But i "know" a few people from the area through another forum ... and the picture their reports and whats trickling down to our news outlets here is painting looks horrific.

I just hope for all of the people there, that they get out of there ASAP.

 

[namron711]

Thank you Huckleman2000,

This definitely deserves a bump. I have Republican friends that are exactly as you described. How can anyone refute what you say. But they will of course. The administration fan club will come up with their smart remarks. We can expect that. We've already read it here on LIT.

There is no doubting the fact that our country's government is clueless as to how to protect itself. Think of all the money spent on political bureaucratic bullshit. How many 6 figured genuises work for the government and political think tanks. Man, do we get our tax dollar's worth, or what?!?!!? Frankly, I think that they know that this shit is going to happen, but just don't give a shit about it.

It's a shame that after September 11, 2001, our country is probably in worse shape than it has ever been.
===================================================



more from here :
Quote:
Olbermann, Limbaugh, Sharpton and the GOP Mindset
by mcolley
Thu Sep 1st, 2005 at 18:31:31 PDT

Keith Olbermann just had an extraordinary exchange between himself and Al Sharpton.

The subject was the conditions in New Orleans, looting, and the question of where support is.

Olbermann remarked that he had heard Rush Limbaugh earlier today saying that those that were still in New Orleans deserved what they had gotten, as they had chosen to live there. Olbermann went so far as to call him, "that Limbaugh". Denouncing the inherent inconsiderate nature of such a statement.

But Sharpton made the point that struck me...

* mcolley's diary :: ::
*

The Right, as embodied by Limbaugh, Frist, Bush, Hastert, DeLay. They would move heaven and earth to save the life of one White Woman in Florida to combat the very idea of euthanasia (which technically it was not). A woman that a decade earlier had lost her ability to so much as ask for help, much less have coherent thoughts about the quality of her own life.

And they would sit on their ass and watch as tens of thousands of poor men, women, children, babies, and elderly bake in the New Orleans heat surrounded by water, sewage, gasoline and an abandoned city, now devoid of anyone with the means to have escaped ahead of the storm.

This is the culture of life. The culture of life wants to save brain dead white women and unborn children. The culture of life wants you to watch endless non-news about the disappearance of one white teenager in Aruba. The culture of life wants you to support your nation as it kills tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians in its Quixotic quest against a non-threat. The culture of life wants a zero-tolerance for looters policy to sound authoritative as babies die of dehydration. The culture of life expects you to take care of yourself, and if you can't, then it is your own fault for getting into that situation in the first place. Fuck off. You had your shot. Station in life, where you hang your hat, and whether you have the $40 at the end of the month to pay for the overpriced gasoline to get out of that home in time is all up to you.

Always I have argued with Republican friends--the reasonable ones--that not everyone was dealt the same cards on their original Birth Day. Not everyone has been given the same gifts by God, friends, family, or luck. Always those Republican friends believe that they deserve where they have gotten in life, and that no one, including the government, should be asking for their hard-earned cash to help the less affluent. It is always the fault of the lesser-affluent themselves. Circumstances are irrelevant in all cases and constitute class warfare if the question is raised.

Bullshit.

But that's their thing. That's how they see the world. They earned everything they got. Their parents might have given them a nudge, but nothing more. Get a fucking clue.

Bush came away from his mega vacation one day early...Wednesday. Hastert doesn't know why we should rebuild. Condie Rice went to the show on Broadway.

All of these people support the Culter of Life. But none seem to support American Culture. New Orleans, as much as any city, represents distinctly American Culture. A melting-pot of language, music and revelry unlike any other. But it is desperately poor. Over 50% of the children in the state live below the poverty level. But no matter. Mostly black folk down there. They shouldn't have lived there in the first place. They should have gotten out while they had the chance. It's their own fault.

Michael Chertoff was interviewed on NPR this afternoon. He was asked if he had heard of thousands of people at the Convention Center in New Orleans, without water or food or sanitation. Elderly dying. Little girls being raped. Mr. Chertoff was eloquent in his cluelessness. Completely unaware of what had been on the television all day long on both MSNBC and CNN. Unaware that he, at the top of the agency charged with bringing relief to the affected areas, had not been informed of something every American with a remote already knew. That the situation there was desperate. That people needed help. And that noone seemed to be providing it. The man in charge was not in charge at all, folks. It took the Bush Administration 4 years since 9/11... 4 years of chasing ghosts and old demons in Iraq to not do a fucking thing about stateside preparedness. To gut the national guard's responsiveness by sending so many of them overseas. To cut funding for the levee system that allowed Lake Ponchartrain to roll into the city. To put someone in charge of Homeland Security and FEMA that is eloquent, but so impossibly incompetent that he is incapable of establishing a staff capable of letting him know the worst of a situation so large.

Mr. Chertoff said, that he had not heard of such things. That you couldn't believe every rumor from the streets of the area. That he wasn't in a position to argue about what the NPR Reporters had witnessed.

Get the people to our staging areas, he stated, and they can get water there.

Thanks, asshole.

I almost cried last night. A little girl was with her grandfather, their late model sedan stalled in hip deep water. She was standing on what I think was the highway divider next to the car. Soaked. Crying. Her grandfather, dismayed and dazed behind her. Both of them looked at the car, but it was the begging of the young girl that got me. She couldn't have been more than 2 years older than my daughter. And there she was, in the middle of a lake that wasn't there the day before, in the middle of a city that had been destroyed, begging and pleading for the people filming her, and those they were with, to help them. They just needed a push. To higher ground.

And there she stayed, as the vehicle the camera rode in pulled away.

Cross-posted at progprog

mcolley
I'm not liberal, I'm just paying attention

 

[Guest]

I have Republican friends that are exactly as you described. How can anyone refute what you say. But they will of course. The administration fan club will come up with their smart remarks. We can expect that. We've already read it here on LIT.

Troops are finally moving into New Orleans in realistic numbers, and it's past time. What took the government so long? The thin veneer separating civilization and chaos, which we earlier worried might collapse in the absence of swift action, has collapsed.
...
We expected to see, many hours ago, the president we saw standing atop the ruin of the World Trade Center, rallying a dazed country to action. We're pleased he finally caught a ride home from his vacation, but he risks losing the one trait his critics have never dented: His ability to lead, and be seen leading.
...
The list of things he has promised is a good list, but there is no time to dally, whether by land, sea or air. We should have delivered them yesterday. Americans are dying.

Believe it or not this is from The Washington Times, a conservative paper.

 

[sincerely_helene]

The people that stayed behind were mostly the poorer people of New Orleans. Among these, unfortunately, are the criminal element. They're doing what they know how to do, which is be criminals. Most of the people left behind truly want/need help, but the few that are being violent are fucking it up for everyone. I don't understand it myself, but it's being reported that there are people being raped, beaten and shot in some of the areas that the police and rescuers won't go because it's too dangerous. And I don't even want to talk about the convention center, because that just makes me ill.

I see. Thanks for the response.

 

[sincerely_helene]

Because in the USA someone is always ready to shoot someone.

Really: why are they shooting? Who knows? Rage, insanity, opportunity, sheer fucked-upness.

They built a new baseball stadium here in Chicago for the White Sox something like 10 years ago. Not surprisingly, they put it into a poor neighborhood, not far from some high-rise black housing projects.

No sooner had the stadium opened than snipers from the projects started shooting at people in the grandstands. Not much: maybe a shot or two a week. No rhyme, no reason. Most likely it was kids trying to make a name for themselves, or just acting out of rage and boredom, or simply because they had a clear shot from the project roof to the grandstands.

They finally built a wall that blocked the view and the problem stopped. The police never found anyone to arrest. The projects are another world: no one knows anything, no one talks to the police.

I imagine something similar happened in New Orleans. I heard someone on TV say that the shots were fired in anger over seeing the helicopters flying over them while their own rescue was being ignored, but I rather think it's just random, senseless anger and rage. Certainly they didn't know who they were shooting at. They didn't say, "Hey, that chopper's evacuating sick people! I'm going to take them out!"

Every so often, the frustration and fury of the underclass explodes. Mariginalized and ignored, living in appalling conditions, they just erupt a murderous, destructive riot. It doesn't take much. These are people who have no love or respect for the system. They'd just as soon bring the whole thing down.

I'm not trying to make excuses, and no doubt the shooters are a fraction of a per cent of the poor people trapped in NO, but the US is an angry society and it doesn't take much for that anger to explode.

Now I sort of feel as though I asked a stupid question. I'm in Canada, and a lot of us just don't understand because we don't have to deal with that kind of hostile mentality. Thank you for the reply.

 

[sincerely_helene]

Helene, I saw your post, but to be honest, the only replies I could think of at the time would be inappropriate and possibly offensive to many lit. posters. Your -edness is a probably a tribute to Canada.

Get out of my head!

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

POOR BLACKS WORST HIT
By WILLIAM BUNCH
Posted on Fri, Sep. 02, 2005
bunchw@phillynews.com


MANY DON'T OWN a car, and some who did couldn't scrape together the money for a tank of gas.

Many of them had to work over the weekend, when thousands of better-off residents were crowding the I-10 evacuation route out of New Orleans.

Some were reportedly waiting for government checks due on Sept. 1, four days away.

"No funds," one 41-year-old woman surrounded by four young children told the New Orleans Times-Picayune when asked last Sunday why she was seeking shelter at the Superdome.

Some were old, some were infirm, and some were homeless. Most of them were also African-American, and the vast majority came from the poorest neighborhoods in a poverty-plagued city.

Today, they are the stranded and the desperate.

And as a nightmare of biblical proportions in the hurricane- and flood-ravaged city continues to grow more hellish by the hour, Americans are beginning to openly wonder what the New Orleans disaster is telling us about class, and to some extent race, in our society.

"So many of the people who did not evacuate, could not evacuate for whatever reason," former New Orleans mayor Marc Morial told NBC's "Today" show yesterday. "They are people who are African-American mostly but not completely, and people who were of little or limited economic means."

What's more, many are starting to ask why - with mounting evidence that the below-sea-level metropolis might not survive a Category 3 or stronger hurricane - there was no plan for getting New Orleans' poorest residents out of town.

When the Crescent City went through an evacuation - and a near miss - with last year's Hurricane Ivan, critics complained about poor traffic management for those who tried to leave by car, as well as the fact that so many in poorer areas didn't leave at all.

For those who could drive, local officials developed a new counter-flow traffic plan that worked much better for Katrina.

For the estimated 134,000 New Orleans residents without vehicles, the city produced a DVD that was sent out to churches and community groups, urging them to leave town but admitting the government could not take them.

"You're responsible for your safety, and you should be responsible for the person next to you," local Red Cross executive director Kay Wilkins explained to the Times-Picayune six weeks ago.

"If you have some room to get that person out of town, the Red Cross will have a space for that person outside the area. We can help you, but we don't have the transportation."

Ironically, the Red Cross has run a network of shelters in New Orleans in the event of hurricane warnings. But it decided several years ago not to open them in the event of a Category 3 or stronger storm because it was more important to get people out of the below-sea-level area - despite the lack of any organized system for transporting them.

Indeed, as Katrina bore down on New Orleans last weekend, Mayor Ray Nagin marshaled a fleet of city buses - not to take the city's poor out of town but to the large shelter at the Superdome, where civil order would fall apart as the week progressed.

"Keep in mind, a hurricane, a Cat 5, with high winds, most likely will knock out all electricity in the city, and, therefore, the Superdome is not going to be a very comfortable place at some point in time," Nagin warned on Sunday. "So we're encouraging everyone to leave."

"It's almost as if the planning stopped at the flooding," said Craig E. Colton, a geography professor at Louisiana State University, wondering as many have at the lack of foresight.

Compounding the problem in New Orleans is that those with the least means to evacuate happen to live in the most flood-prone neighborhoods.

Colton - an expert on environmental justice - said that, historically, the poorest groups have lived in the low-lying areas, starting in the 1830s when well-off whites - and their slaves in some cases - built homes on higher ground near Mississippi River levees, while Irish immigrants lived near Lake Pontchartrain at sea level.

Since the 1890s, those lower areas have been largely African-American - most notably the 9th Ward, where the worst flooding occurred this week. Overall, the city is 67 percent black.

"There's a saying out West that water flows toward money, but in New Orleans it's really the reverse, that water flows away from money," Colton said.

And New Orleans is one of the nation's poorest cities, with some 30 percent below the poverty rate.

Benigno E. Aguirre, a professor in the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware, said that New Orleans is not unique when it comes to the poor bearing the brunt of disasters.

"One of the patterns we see is that disasters are not random in their effects, that, instead, certain segments of the community are more vulnerable," Aguirre said.

Ironically, in the early part of the week, few of the TV journalists covering the story mentioned what was obvious from their video, that most victims in New Orleans were poor and black. That started to change yesterday, after a widely circulated story on Slate.com by its media reporter, Jack Shafer.

"When disaster strikes, Americans - especially journalists - like to pretend that no matter who gets hit, no matter what race, color, creed, or socioeconomic level they hail from, we're all in it together," he wrote.

But they don't seem to be pretending in Katrina-battered Mississippi, where a Reuters article yesterday suggested that class resentment over the unequal effect of the hurricane was growing among the displaced.

"Many people didn't have the financial means to get out," Alan LeBreton, 41, an apartment superintendent who lived on Biloxi's seaside road, now in ruins, told the news service. "That's a crime and people are angry about it."

. . . . .

 

[Liar]

It's a terrible tragedy and my heart goes out to those familes. I don't want to blame the victims, but I've got to think that anyone who takes their infant children to participate in a jam-packed shoulder-to-shoulder semi-hysterical religious procession where men are whipping themselves into a frenzy with chains--especially in Iraq these days, where any crowd is an open invitation to insurgent bombs--is not acting in their own best interests.

Hmm. Putting on my Devil's Advocate hat for a second.

I don't want to blame the victims, but I've got to think that anyone who makes their living in a valley below sea level in the midst of a muddy bog, protected by nothing than an oblong pile of dirt, on a hurricane prone coast--is not acting in their own best interests.

How does that sound?

 

[kendo1]

Look on the bright side- there'll be less poor people to look after and they won't pass their genes on.

 

[Alex756]

Hmm. Putting on my Devil's Advocate hat for a second.

I don't want to blame the victims, but I've got to think that anyone who makes their living in a valley below sea level in the midst of a muddy bog, protected by nothing than an oblong pile of dirt, on a hurricane prone coast--is not acting in their own best interests.

How does that sound?

The people in iraq were not born on that bridge, they chose to go and take part in that.

The fair comparison would be to compare the working poor of NO to the poor in famine striken Africa. They had no control over the location they were born. Many of these families have been there for generations. This was their home, the place their daddy came from, and their grandparents and their great grandparents. My friends aunt was living in a house that is now destroyed that had had 8 generations of her family in it. She had family living in NO and the area before it was part of the US.

A person doesn't chose where they are born, they CHOOSE what activities they participate in.

--Alex

 

[Alex756]

Look on the bright side- there'll be less poor people to look after and they won't pass their genes on.

Can I take issue with that even as the sarcastic remark I pray you intended. Many people on this board have relatives and friends that could be a body floating in that water.


-Alex

 

[oggbashan]

Hmm. Putting on my Devil's Advocate hat for a second.

I don't want to blame the victims, but I've got to think that anyone who makes their living in a valley below sea level in the midst of a muddy bog, protected by nothing than an oblong pile of dirt, on a hurricane prone coast--is not acting in their own best interests.

How does that sound?

By that reasoning, most of the capital cities of the world should be evacuated because they are at risk of a rise in sea level caused by a storm surge; The Netherlands, Bangladesh, the Andaman Islands, large parts of China and Venice should be uninhabitable because of the risk of flooding; Japan, New Zealand and the State of Hawaii because of volcanic and earthquake activity; large parts of Southern Germany, Austria and Northern Italy because of the risk of avalanche; Mexico City, Auckland, New Zealand and the Bay of Naples because they are close to active volcanoes; most of California because of the San Andreas and other fault lines; anywhere in reach of hurricanes, tornadoes or typhoons; - in short about half the world is unsuitable for human habitation and the most fertile part of it.

Central Australia looks safe. Shame there's no water.

Og

 

[Liar]

The people in iraq were not born on that bridge, they chose to go and take part in that.

They were born in Baghdad. Or Iraq in general. That is a risk in itself. And what can you do if not participate in daily life? Avoid crowds? Hide at home? This includes the religious activities of your choice. A thing like this (maybe not at the same scale, but similar) could easily have happened at a market or a sports stadium. All I was trying to say is that "they had it coming" is a null and void attitude there as well as in NO.




Og, as explained in this post, it was not my reasoning. To extend it, it is not just about sea-level cities, hat si a bit of a narrow perspective. Instead about every place where people live where there are risks.

 

[kendo1]

Can I take issue with that even as the sarcastic remark I pray you intended. Many people on this board have relatives and friends that could be a body floating in that water.


-Alex

You can take issue with it if you want.
The fact remains that people decided to stay when they were warned to leave- in no uncertain terms.Whose fault is that? Not mine.

And yes, I do sympathise with their situation, especially when some nutters take potshots at others trying to help them. Seems to happen in the rest of the world too.

 

[Liar]

You can take issue with it if you want.
The fact remains that people decided to stay when they were warned to leave- in no uncertain terms.Whose fault is that? Not mine.

Have no car.
Have no money.
Have nothing except the life I have here.
Have a traffic jam for miles and miles in every direction I look.
Have to evacuate pronto.

That's what many people faced in the hours before Katrina struck. What would you have done?

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

Hmm. Putting on my Devil's Advocate hat for a second.

I don't want to blame the victims, but I've got to think that anyone who makes their living in a valley below sea level in the midst of a muddy bog, protected by nothing than an oblong pile of dirt, on a hurricane prone coast--is not acting in their own best interests.

How does that sound?

It sounds like you have never been dirt-poor, down on your luck, to me.

When you are poor, you go where you can afford housing , hopefully not too far from where you work.

If you are on welfare, you go where you are told.

When you are sick in America, too soon you are dirt poor, even if you have worked hard all your life.

When you are old, and not rich, you are a physical – if not a financial – burden on your children.

When you are a child, you live where your parents live, and – burdened with you – they must accept more and more unacceptable housing.

I suggest you take off your Devil’s Advocate’s hat and burn it.

 

[kendo1]

How much does a bus ride cost?
What's a life worth?

More to the point, the reason I was sarcastic- would help have arrived quicker and would there be more of it if the people who were affected were white, upper income Americans rather than poor black?

Apologies if I've offended you.

 

[oggbashan]

...
Og, as explained in this post, it was not my reasoning. To extend it, it is not just about sea-level cities, that is a bit of a narrow perspective. Instead about every place where people live where there are risks.

The Devil's Advocate position does have limitations. New Orleans has stood where it is for centuries. There has always been a risk. What there does not seem to have been is a reasonable judgement about the cost of protection and the apparent risk. The Netherlands have spent billions of dollars on flood protection for their country since they (and we) were caught out by the North Sea storm surge of 1953.

An aside: During and after the floods of 1953 this country and the Netherlands received considerable help from US forces stationed here. We owe them thanks for that and if we can assist New Orleans I'm sure our countries will respond. The Netherlands have been the world's experts in flood protection for hundreds of years.

Should the French be blamed for establishing New Orleans where they did? I don't think they expected it to grow to the size it is now. The pictures from NO seem to show that the French quarter was slightly higher than much of the rest. Was that accidental?

Og

 

[Liar]

It sounds like you have never been dirt-poor, down on your luck, to me.

When you are poor, you go where you can afford housing , hopefully not too far from where you work.

If you are on welfare, you go where you are told.

When you are sick in America, too soon you are dirt poor, even if you have worked hard all your life.

When you are old, and not rich, you are a physical – if not a financial – burden on your children.

When you are a child, you live where your parents live, and – burdened with you – they must accept more and more unacceptable housing.

I suggest you take off your Devil’s Advocate’s hat and burn it.

Um... did you, like, y'know, totally miss the context and intention of my post? I know and agree with all you say there.

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

kendo1

How much does a bus ride cost?
What's a life worth?

"Why were the municipal buses, as well as the hundreds of school buses that transport children in the Greater New Orleans area, not used to take the most helpless to those out-of-town Red Cross shelters, especially when the Red Cross had pretty much acknowledged that a hurricane would make the city uninhabitable?"



That's right in this artile. Please read it.

How the poor got trapped in hellish New Orleans
The PhillyFeed
September 01, 2005

Earlier this week, we told you how locals and New Orleans-based Army Corps of Engineers begged the Bush administration to spend more money on shoring up the city's levees, to no avail. But the as the hellish situation in the city slides into anarchy tonight, there is clearly another failure of equal importance -- and this time there's blame for everybody.

In the months leading up to Hurricane Katrina, it became increasingly clear to local officials that in the event of a killer storm, the No. 1 problem in a city with a 30 percent poverty rate was some 134,000 residents who did not have a car. They knew these people had no way to get out of town -- and that a Category 3 hurricane or stronger would likely bring a flood of Biblical proportions.

And so the plan was...to do nothing.

Well, almost nothing. This summer, as local officials were streamlining the counter-flow interstate traffic plan so that better-off New Orleans residents could leave more quickly, they also prepared a DVD for local churches and civil groups urging the poor to find a ride out of town.

They didn't say who from. They only said who it wouldn't be: The government. Even more amazing, the mayor of New Orleans took the city's buses -- the most viable means for getting poor residents out of town -- and used them to bring people to the Superdome, even as he was acknowledging that conditions there were bound to deteriorate.

This is from a story we just filed for tomorrow's Daily News.

"You're responsible for your safety, and you should be responsible for the person next to you," local Red Cross executive director Kay Wilkins explained to the Times-Picayune just six weeks ago. "If you have some room to get that person out of town, the Red Cross will have a space for that person outside the area. We can help you. But we don't have the transportation.”

Ironically, the Red Cross has run a network of shelters in New Orleans in the event of hurricane warnings. But it decided several years ago not to open them for a Category 3 or stronger storm that it was more important to get people out of the below-sea-level area - despite the lack of any organized system for transporting them.

Indeed, as Katrina bore down on New Orleans last weekend, Mayor Ray Nagin marshalled a fleet of city buses - not to take the city’s poor out of town but to the large shelter at the Superdome, where civil order would fall apart as the week progressed.

“Keep in mind, a hurricane, a Cat 5, with high winds, is most likely will knock out all electricity in the city, and, therefore, the Superdome is not going to be a very comfortable place at some point in time,” Nagin warned on Sunday. “So we're encouraging everyone to leave.”

“It’s almost as if the planning stopped at the flooding,” said Craig E. Colton, a geography professor at Louisiana State University, wondering as many have at the lack of foresight.

By the way, here (from Nexis -- no link) is more of the Times-Picayune story from July 24 this year about the city's DVD warning. The story begins: "City, state and federal emergency officials are preparing to give the poorest of New Orleans' poor a historically blunt message: In the event of a major hurricane, you're on your own."

It says lower down:

Their message will be distributed on hundreds of DVDs across the city. The DVDs' basic get-out-of-town message applies to all audiences, but the it is especially targeted to scores of churches and other groups heavily concentrated in Central City and other vulnerable, low-income neighborhoods, said the Rev. Marshall Truehill, head of Total Community Action.

"The primary message is that each person is primarily responsible for themselves, for their own family and friends," Truehill said.

In addition to the plea from Nagin, Thomas and Wilkins, video exhortations to make evacuation plans come from representatives of State Police and the National Weather Service, and from local officials such as Sen. Ann Duplessis, D-New Orleans, and State Rep. Arthur Morrell, D-New Orleans, said Allan Katz, whose advertising company is coordinating officials' scripts and doing the recording.

The speakers explain what to bring and what to leave behind. They advise viewers to bring personal medicines and critical legal documents, and tell them how to create a family communication plan. Even a representative of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals weighs in with a message on how to make the best arrangements for pets left behind.

The Bush-run federal government is far from blameless. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, which has botched the Katrina operation from Day One, was also well aware of the problems of evacuating the poor. Their response:

Last year, FEMA spent $250,000 to conduct an eight-day hurricane drill for a mock killer storm hitting New Orleans. Some 250 emergency officials attended. Many scenarios now playing out, including a helicopter evacuation of the Superdome, were discussed in that drill for a fictional storm named Pam.

This year, the group was to design a plan to fix such unresolved problems as evacuating sick and injured people from the Superdome and housing tens of thousands of stranded citizens. But funding for that planning was cut, said Tolbert, who also was disaster chief for North Carolina.

Why did this have to happen? Why was the issue of getting the poor and the car-less out of New Orleans treated like there was no solution, when there was so much that could have been done?

Why were the municipal buses, as well as the hundreds of school buses that transport children in the Greater New Orleans area, not used to take the most helpless to those out-of-town Red Cross shelters, especially when the Red Cross had pretty much acknowledged that a hurricane would make the city uninhabitable?

Why was there no thought given to using the city's rail lines (there really is a train they call The City of New Orleans, you know), to ferry the poverty-stricken to higher ground?

With a problem on the scale that a federal role was clearly needed, why did FEMA suddenly punt?

The most disgusting part of all of this is now that the poor have once again been failed by their government leaders, local and federal, we saw tonight that the head of FEMA is now blaming the victims:

"I think the death toll may go into the thousands and, unfortunately, that's going to be attributable a lot to people who did not heed the advance warnings," Michael Brown told CNN.

Actually, he's right.

But those people who did not heed the advance warnings were our political leaders.

 

[oggbashan]

Organising EVacuations

In the UK we have had nothing like hurricane Katrina. We have had natural disasters on a smaller scale.

When, in the UK, a decision is made to evacuate an area, it is evacuated. The sick and vulnerable are high on the list of priorities and are included in the disaster planning. Although many people will be able to evacuate themselves, those who cannot will be transported to a designated place of safety. Buses and trains will be requistioned. Even privately owned minibuses might be ordered to help.

The whole area will be cleared. Staying behind is not an option unless you are very pigheaded. If you are, you will have to argue with the police.

That is the theory. God help us if we have to do something on the scale required in the Southern US but we would try our damnedest to move everyone and leave no one behind especially the poor, the elderly and the ill.

When it has happened, on a small scale, with at most thousands, not tens of thousands - it has worked and everyone was moved and found shelter, water and food.

Maybe we are different. Maybe our welfare state makes us more inclined to consider everyone. I don't know. I do know I would be ashamed of myself if I had a spare seat in my car and didn't fill it with someone.

Og

 

[Liar]

I'm trying to think... (don't laugh).

What was the time window here, from knowing the shit is about to hit the fan, until the mother of all fans hit the shores of the city? How many people, and under what circumstances, needed to be evacuated? How many needed help from the goverment for this? How prepared was the infrastructure for the traffic load?

What I'm trying to get at is...what wouls a best possible evacuation scenario have looked like, given the circumstances? How have large scale rapid evacuation of a big city worked in previous situations? Has it ever been done well? I can't recall any situation where time was this short and the city this big.

 

[sophia jane]

I'm trying to think... (don't laugh).

What was the time window here, from knowing the shit is about to hit the fan, until the mother of all fans hit the shores of the city? How many people, and under what circumstances, needed to be evacuated? How many needed help from the goverment for this? How prepared was the infrastructure for the traffic load?

What I'm trying to get at is...what wouls a best possible evacuation scenario have looked like, given the circumstances? How have large scale rapid evacuation of a big city worked in previous situations? Has it ever been done well? I can't recall any situation where time was this short and the city this big.

They start talking about evacuations days ahead. There were people who left on Friday. The mayor, according to what I heard, "begged" people to leave on Sunday. That was the point when they knew it was pretty much going to hit New Orleans, so there was about 24 hours to do a big push to get everyone out.
Is it possible to get everyone out? Probably not. But if you can load people who don't have cars up on buses to take them to the Superdome, you can also load them up to take them east.

 

[Lord DragonsWing]

Living in Mobile, I just got power back yesterday. Right after I took a couple hour nap and a cold shower before going back to work.
Bush was here today to start his tour. I'm not sure if everyone saw it, but instead of rushing out to the chopper to see the devastation in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana he posed for several photo ops!!!!!!!!!! Not with the brave members of the Coast Guard but with politicians!!!!!!!!!!!
I spent half the day today in line for gas. What I saw was saddening and heart lifting. Families from Mississippi and Louisiana with their few belongings packed into their car. People running out of gas and everyone pulling together to help push their cars to the pumps.
We had a beautiful island here called Dauphin Island, well it is now several islands. The homes are destroyed that were on the island.
I can't believe it has taken the Federal Government 5 days to get relief to the people along the gulf coast. There was a better response for Indonesia who had relief in 2 days. Thank the Gods Bush can't run for re-election. He would not get my vote.
I was only 10 when Camille went through. This is worse. Katrina was bigger. She hit 3 states and hit us all very hard. Nothing along the coast was as well developed at the time of Camille. Now, you have businesses, beach houses all over the coast and a population growth. This was much worse than Camille and Frederick.
The good news is I found out a friend of mine in Biloxi survived. Her and her son had stayed. She is the supervisor of our home health company there. While she stayed to help the patients and other nurses our office staff here in Mobile ran to Atlanta leaving us to care for our patients on our own. Now, they're chewing us all out for the overtime. Fuck it!!!!!!!! Let them try to sit in line for hours getting gas for a patients generator, let them go through 12 hours of hurricane force winds, let them have their assistant sitting on the floor praying and rubbing their rosary beads.
Sorry if I ranted. But damn it feels good to release among friends.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Hey, LDW! Glad to see you made it. If you feel like bitching, this is the place to be.

I'm trying to think... (don't laugh).

What was the time window here, from knowing the shit is about to hit the fan, until the mother of all fans hit the shores of the city? How many people, and under what circumstances, needed to be evacuated? How many needed help from the goverment for this? How prepared was the infrastructure for the traffic load?

What I'm trying to get at is...what wouls a best possible evacuation scenario have looked like, given the circumstances? How have large scale rapid evacuation of a big city worked in previous situations? Has it ever been done well? I can't recall any situation where time was this short and the city this big.

This is something I've wondered about quite a bit myself. I couldn't imagine them trying to evacuate a city like Chicago or New York. It just wouldn't work. The freeways would clog, and that would be the end of it.

I grew up during the cold war, when there was a thing called Civil Defense in the US, a government agency and program for surviving a nuclear war. Civil Defense designated shelters, stockpiled them with supplies, and showed a lot of fim clips on TV telling us how to survive a nuclear holocaust. Supposedly they had plans for evacuating the cities and getting everyone out safely, so we were all told to relax. The government had it all well in hand.

Well, it turned out that Civil Defense was bullshit from the start. The food they stockpiled were old rations from WWII and barrels of water, and the supplies were toally inadequate. The evacuation plans said no more than "Get everyone out of town!" They knew there was nothing they could do to evacuate a major city. Civil Defense was just a phantom program to keep us sedated in a fool's paradise.

There's simply no way you could evacuate a major city in 24 hours, or 48, or even 72. It just can't be done. If they told everyone to get out of Chicago, I'd stay right where I was. I'd rather die at home than out on the highway in a traffic jam.