Hurricane Katrina

I have to agree that the moving folks to the Superdome was a boneheaded move...but all facets of "the man" have dropped the ball on this one, from the local and state support, to FEMA, and up.

My beef is that some sort of national/state disaster plan should have been setup after 9/11. Gee, I wonder where all the motivation, resources, and budget went.

There obviously wasn't much direction given in terms of how to deal with something like this....they are still airlifting folks off rooftops four days later!!! And the feds have been saying all week that the Natl Guard is coming with food, but they didn't arrive until today? It's possible that they considered relocating low income people but who knows what might have been the deterant (a lot of people not leaving because they don't FEEL they have the resources themselves). Would Houston have opened up the Astrodome and other shelters prior to the storm??? Maybe.

Some of the fault would start with local and state officials, but it certainly doesn't stop there.



There's been some great live coverage on CNN, they're really letting people say whatever they want to say...even their own reporters are talking about how embarassing the slow response has been. They also played some of the radio interview with the mayor.

 

You ever try to move 30000 people in 24 hours? Aside from this alot of these folks had an attitude that they had lived through this or that hurricane and were not leaving thier homes.

Lorien,
as I said before, I don't argue the fact that leadership and communication broke down, but as I said, do you think people in the Hampton's would have had to wait 5 days for help?

 

Good article on how this might have been avoided, had there not been budget cuts due to the Iraq war.

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,372455,00.html

 

Populations:

Jefferson, La. 452,459
Orleans, La. 469,032
Plaquemines, La. 28,025
St. Bernard, La. 65,554
St. Tammany, La. 191,268
Hancock, Miss. 42,967
Harrison, Miss. 189,601
Jackson, Miss. 51,678

Have you not been watching the TV (CNN, MSNBC, ETC...)... I've been watching it for hours and only seen 1 white person yet. I don't think it's a direct race issue, but it's a "poor" issue and you have to look at who this disporportionately effects when taking the situation as a whole into consideration.

 

Remember the problem with america is not the racism but the class system. Just happend the urban black man is in the lowest class and living up to the sterotype of having little morals(here come the red reps) while there are many good there are many bad to make up for it. When you shoot at firefighters, national guards men, rescue heli., and loot hospitals full of sick people you are no longer "people". Do I think the news is racist? Not a chance in hell, if they could get footage of white people looting they'd show it 1,000 times just to be politically correct. National Diasters bring out the best in people and the worst in others and you can see the difference. Hell if you can steal cars after the storm why the hell can't you steal one before the storm and protect your family?

 

Mizt
"When you shoot at firefighters, national guards men, rescue heli., and loot hospitals full of sick people you are no longer "people"."


You are crazy... those are called druggies (crack heads) they are looking for a high and they will do anything to get it... some druggies are black, some are white... but if you live in a city that is 70% black then most likely at least 70% of them will be black.

Yeah, there is no excuse for shooting at the firefighters, etc... As far as I know this happened once (last night). But how many people were shooting at them? So now all black people are living up to the "sterotype of having little morals". Just for you to mention that is rediculous. The problem is and will always be socio-economic... crime happens more frequently in areas that are poorer. (And yes, because of the history of the U.S many African-Americans are poor.) Right now there is no place that has more people financially struggling than New Orleans... so what do you expect!

 

i seen some footage of what look to be (i know this is terrible stereo type) gay white guys looting a clothing store

who know how many people are actually shooting at rescue workers, and how many are just shooting or shooting at each other

if your gang has a problem with another gang, the hurricane has a presented a really good opertunity to attack them and get away with it

 

Do you guys realise that you all just said exactly the same thing? (Last 3 posts Edit - before ferret77)

 

There no way you can spin this to make it right. For no reason should you ever take aim at some one who is trying to help your fellow neighbors in a situtaion like this. The hospitals are getting looted, the nurses fear for there lifes, and people are dying on the hospital beds because these "druggies" as you call them have looted everything from the hospital. Again its a class issuse, just in this case they happen to be urban black man.

 

mizt would probably just say that's gays living up to there sterotype (Gays and Clothes).

Mizt you're funny!!!

 

There will be lots of armchair quarterbacking. I've seen posts on left leaning blogs where many say they will make it an issue. I've seen some already blaming the hurricane itself on the Governor, as if he can pull a cat 5 hurricane out of his specially marked box of Lucky Charms.

Bush is disappointed with it. I'm disappointed with certain aspects. But I'm not there. I only see what is available on the news. Things like "the city is under water," "there are limited access points to the city." I see reports that teams have rescued by helicopter 3000 people a day and wonder, how many helicopters it takes to rescue that many people per day. I wonder how FEMA could prepare 150,000 meals yesterday. I wonder how people that are surrounded by water, up to roof tops, can get out of there when the best rescuers have are little boats to navigate through the city. I wonder how any sort of message could get out, when there is no electricity, no phone service, no communications at all.

And above all, I wonder given all those things and more, what so many people that arm chair quarterback would have done differently. What didn't they do, that they could have done or done better to cause so much blame and finger pointing to take place over rescue efforts for what has been deemed our nation's worst natural disaster?

 

Given evacutaion warnings earlier.

 

you really don't much time to give warnings, they only really know where its going hit like 48 hours before it hits

 

Evaucation warnings were given in plenty of time. Oddly enough, on the news yesterday, I saw a woman blaming herself for not heading evacuation warnings. Said she had ridden others out and didn't take the warnings seriously. I found it somewhat startling that she took responsibility for her actions. An admirable quality.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/katrina_world_offers

Too big to post the whole article, but too important to single out a few select paragraphs. This is humbling and inspiring. Thank you to those countries and others that may not have been listed. I just heard on the news Fidel Castro pledged over a thousand doctors and other resources for help.

Thank you.

 

It's not a total dead zone Gtech...people have generators and cells phones are still working. If you go back through this thread you'll find posts linking to blogs, BLOGS THAT PEOPLE IN NEW ORLEANS ARE WRITING WHILE THIS IS HAPPENING.

Sometimes what you hear is all about timing. If you didn't catch CNN this afternoon then you might not have seen the Coastguard report that they've airlifted approximately 4000 stranded (including hospital patients) for the total week (not per day). From what I've been reading and watching, they were basically the only organization running a serious rescue op. If you watch the CNN feeds closely you'll notice that one of the levee breaks is being worked on by a single bull dozer. A SINGLE freakin bull dozer. That's it.

Speaking of which, CNN also reported that 40% of the Louisiana State Guard is on active duty in Iraq.



I may be an armchair (desktop) commentator, but I'd rather be educated and consume all of the information I can about something....then sit by and just be content with whatever government issued pap the media wants to feed us.

 

I read that article and I also thought it was humbling and inspiring.

However, after how we got burned last time we let Cuba send people to the US I could see how the government would be a little reluctant to accept this one offer.

 

they have these digging machines for mining, their wheels are like several stories high, I wonder why they can't drive one of them down their to fix the levy

or maybe one of these

 

Quintana Roo (where Cancun is) was hit by a hurricane a few weeks ago. Everybody was evacuated a few days before and there was total control about emergency plans to deal with possible problems.

The hurrican passed, and not one person was injured. Many countries in the world sent notes to the Mexican Government congratulating them on the perfect way they handled the problem.

If a crummy 3rd world country could do it, I don't understand why the world's strongest nation couldn't.

 

DS, it may not be a total dead zone in a few select areas, but I submit that most of the affected people that have moved to higher ground, do not have generators to plug their cell phones into or anything else for that matter. Cell phones do not last long on battery. The people I'm seeing, the victims, are not toting cell phones. People have been without electricity and communications. I'm not sure what your point is, but everything I've seen disagrees with it. There may be *some* generators and some with cell phones in less affected areas, but it's not representative of the masses.

I do agree about the timing. I did catch yesterday, a report that said 3000 had been rescued by airlift. To which network, I couldn't tell you. I've been going between MSNBC, CNN and Fox. I've also seen reports that suggest 1250, and now 4000.

Perhaps CNN wasn't aware of these:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...r,1,899521.story?coll=sns-ap-nation-headlines
http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/nation/12548460.htm
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/02/katrina.dewatering/
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...,1,1851059.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed
http://www.suntimes.com/output/hurricane/01levee.html

Searching google news, I'm not finding anything about how levee breaks are being worked on by only a single bulldozer. http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8&q=katrina+levee+bulldozer&btnG=Search+News
I won't discount that it may have been reported, but it's not matching up with what I'm seeing. There are so many reports, I have no doubt there will be some inaccuracy.

I don't think anyone is "content." But it's clear there are many varying reports out there offering many different versions of stories. I'm not convinced that sitting around pointing fingers and armchair quarterbacking is the best thing. CNN also reported (well, the police officer on camera that was disgusted with his fellow policeman) that 1/3rd of the police in the city left or have not reported for duty. I could see the anger in his eyes and shared in that. There will be plenty of "blame" to go around for everyone looking to place blame in the months to come. There are so many people putting so much effort into rescuing, evacuating, supplying and restoring order. I just think it's ashame to discount these peoples efforts by sitting around pointing fingers.