in case you've been living under a rock for the last three days, you should take some time out of your day today and take a long look at footage of New Orleans. if you have some time, go to your local library and browse some newspapers from the last three days. i want all of you who cling to your childish delusions about our strong, effective, fast-acting leadership to contemplate the following facts while you drink your morning coffee, muttering about stupid idiots who 'chose' to stay behind and face the tragedy of katrina.
did you see an organized effort to evacuate new orleans? i didn't. i saw people being left to their own devices. if they had money, transportation, and a place to wait out the storm, they left. if they were poor and without transportation, they stayed in their homes to die or they crammed into the superdome. in other words, in the face of impending disaster, you are on your own.
can you please explain to me why you continue to believe that the 'authorities' will take care of you in the event of a large scale terrorist attack? however little warning there was, there was some warning of the disaster, and the 'authorities' failed to live up to their responsibilities. in my role as king, the very least i'd have done is force people driving out of the city to take people without transportation as passengers. the 'authorities' couldn't even bothered to do that much to help the powerless leave the city.
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Take A Good Long Look
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6 comments:
that entire city is an engineering defect. the previous solution for levee breaches of the lake is to pump water out of the city... back into the lake?! what?! now they're dropping sandbags onto the holes one by one.
well at least they're starting to move people out of the superdome - to houston's astrodome, and they have airlifted thousands of people off of roofs. okay i know that i'm going to jumped on, but i think that many of the people who stayed behind probably chose to chance it. last year, an evacuation was called for ivan(?)/jeanne(?) [shoot, i can't remember] and new orleans was spared; many people this time probably thought they weren't in much danger - lots of false alarms had been called before - and nothing so devastating had been seen in that area, ever.
when i was in nebraska, i pretty much ignored tornado warnings (tornadoes are common in nebraska). i figure that there was a low chance that one would actually hit the particular lot i was sitting on.
however, if i were in new orleans, **had i known that i would have been in serious jeopardy**, i would have taken the hour and a half walk to the superdome (i have no car). the superdome is only five miles away from the hardest hit area.
in any event, everyone's property, rich and poor and in-between, is pretty fucked. homeowners... done. small business owners... seriously done. nature doesn't choose.
oh i think a point that was lost in there is that the "authorities" generally don't prepare for emergencies. yes, i know that "the big one" was bound to happen, but those warnings were treated like doomsday prophecies. until people see things for themselves, they generally don't respond to "possible" dangers. it's human nature to be skeptical. hurricane paths are unpredictable.
hindsight is always 20-20. at least from now on, people will know of the dangers involved.
but lesson learned: don't count on the government.
the bad engineering of the city doesn't have anything to do with the inadequate response to this disaster. there were a lot of people who would have left if they'd had a car, money for a hotel, or a place to stay. there was absolutely NOTHING done to help them leave. the best offered to them was a shelter in the path of the fucking storm.
if the storm were a category five direct hit on the city, i think people in the superdome would have died, either from the destruction of the building or the inevitable flooding.
regardless of how stupid people are in the face of disaster, the emergency response and evacuation procedures were crap. you do know that 100,000 people in new orleans live on less than 9000 a year, right? still think staying was a choice for them? 150,000, while they earn more than 9000, are still below the outdated poverty line.
they were left behind to fend for themselves, and all the bloviating in the world about stupid, stubborn people, is total crap. there are no excuses. no one cared about these people because they're black and poor.
i think the government was stupid and stubborn - now they know what can happen (because it did), and people might actually be concerned about situations like this in the near future (i say near future, because the northeast, despite being hit by a devastating one in 1938, seems to have forgotten what 180mph winds can do), rather than just ogling over models, going "whoa, that would be awful" - why? because now *it actually happened*.
sometimes it takes a disaster to wake people up. but then, people forget and the cycle continues.
forgive me for being cynical, but i've become a firm believer that human nature simply doesn't change. and we just have to work with that fact. it sucks, but it's reality.
(oh, and the mayor of new orleans is african american and a democrat. not that this really matters, but i thought i should throw this in here anyway.)
i think the city was simply overwhelmed, and now it's learned it lesson. for now. *sigh*
i'm not talking about the city and state authorities. i am talking about the federal authorities -- they were asleep at the wheel. they had the manpower and the resources to organize an evacuation, so that everyone who wanted to leave, could have.
if the residents of new orleans had been mostly middle class white people without cars, they'd have been evacuated and housed for free somewhere safe. they wouldn't have been herded into that death trap, the superdome.
d'oh! not so meeting of minds.
yes, i agree. the feds are slow and pathetic as always.
bush was jolted out of another of his vacations. that man needs to plunk his ass in the white house and stop petting his dog at his ranch.
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