Katrina sinking in.

Poststructural Pub
1

I live on the edge of the area of the US most hard hit by Katrina. Here in Birmingham, the last of the power outages are being repaired and it’s largely business as usual. The closest we have, so far, to problems associated with it is that my daughter Angela has no idea about the status of her apartment in Hattiesburg and no real idea of when, or if, she’ll be in college this year. There’s only the slightest trickle of communications coming out of Hattiesburg, which is now being described as the third most hard-hit city, after New Orleans and Gulfport, MS. I’ve been on a forum where there are all of these people desparate to hear from their kids who are students at U. Southern Miss. Angela evacuated well to the north and we’ve been able to hear from her about daily by cell. She’s trying to make arrangements to get home. We’re fortunate in that regard.

While I am so glad to be able to sit from a comfortable distance and think about it, I find that all of this is sinking in and the scope of this tragedy is going to take a while to realize, for all of us. The talk of re-building notwithstanding–and maybe they will–I can’t help but wonder if we’ve essentially just lost New Orleans. I’m just so sad about all the displaced people with no homes, no jobs, no money and, right now, no shelter, food, water. There’s no way to catalog all of the misery. It’s just beyond sad.

2

I don’t think we yet have the foggiest idea how big the tragedy is. Apparently many people just stayed put in New Orleans hoping to ride it out—I saw an estimate of 100,000. If so, many of those people will already be dead. Those who aren’t dead will need food, water and shelter and reports coming out now suggest that they will have to compete with armed gangs to get these things.

I doubt very much that most of the people currently looting stayed on in the hope of exploiting the chaos. Surely there are easier ways of making a living than that. My guess is that all those who survived will be without food and water and looting will be the only way to get those necessities. Will those whose aim is to restore order be able to tell the difference between profiteers and the desperately hungry and thirsty? And where exactly are the rescuers?

Unless someone has a plan for getting all those people trapped in the city out quickly, my fear is that most of them will die one way or another. I hope I’m wrong but it’s 3 days now and I don’t see anything remotely like an adequate evacuation plan yet.

3

I heard a report from a guy in Biloxi this morning. He talked about a zone of coastal devastation, but unlike the major media, he said that FEMA and Red Cross zoomed in “like angels” in his words on Tuesday morning. It was nice to hear something good about the govt and an NGO. I fully expect to read a secret memo here soon to reveal that Bush and Cheney were out on the levee Monday night with shovels to disenfranchise Demo voters to counter that momentary lift.

I have also mused on how the media screws up outside perceptions. THey made a huge deal about the hurricane, then the morning it hit, I actually heard a radio reporter give his live coverage of a tree being uprooted then a Denny’s sign being blown down. Real good radio. This made me think the whole deal was “overblown.” Then later, all this other information comes flooding in.

But just like 9/11, I sit here in Calaforny, with nothing but high gas prices to affect me short term and its a weird feeling. This is a really big deal in our history and I think our economic health has taken a major blow. Also, the more we hear about looting, the more destabilized and unconfident we may feel about our culture. I hope the media will report some of the heroism that most likely is taking place as well to give hope to survivors.

I know it looks terrible, but I can’t help but feel that American resilience will kick in and the NO will be back in action sooner than the long faces would have us believe.

I pray for the survivors because their ordeal is ongoing. Best to you and your kinfolk there, Dale, who may be suffering.

4

One hates to be critical at a time like this, but all of us down in this area have talked over the years about how if a large enough hurricane hit New Orleans, that this very thing could happen. Given that, one would think that a priority over the years would be an adequate crisis management plan. I just read on CNN.com that police officers are having to siphon gas from abandoned cars, fend for themselves for food & water, and there is no order in the city. A meteor didn’t hit N.O. A hurricane did and this possibility, or perhaps inevitability, has been present forever.

5

I have heard very little about the state of Louisiana’s role in all of this. Just criticism of the Feds.

6

Honestly, Weeks. Who gives a rat’s tossbag about image when thousands of people face death or indefinite homelessness?

7

I don’t understand what you mean, Wombly. If you mean my last sentence, I am saying that I am hopeful that though media portrays the situation as hopeless, perhaps there is more hope at hand, less death than feared etc. Of course, people have suffered terribly . :confused:

8

I saw a report the other day that said that many of the people who chose to stay did so because they didn’t feel they had any option…they were among the poorest of the poor, and had no car with which to evacuate and no money for hotels and restaurant meals, so they stayed put and hoped for the best. What I don’t understand is why there wasn’t some way to help such people get out…perhaps mobilizing city busses or something, and using broadcast to make sure they’d know they would be sheltered regardless of money? It breaks my heart to think that so many people died or are now in terrible danger because they didn’t feel they had any other recourse.

The magnitude of this is just starting to sink in. I was reading this morning that they’ve had to suspend rescue operations because the looting and other lawlessness is so bad that the rescuers fear for their lives. Where’s the National Guard?

Redwolf

9

The jibe about Bush and Cheney made it look as though you cared about image. The remark about heroism. I just don’t see why you would right now. That stuff doesn’t matter.

Obviously people are going to criticise the authorities for lack of foresight since that is clearly a major factor. But I can’t see that any of that criticism has anything to do with who the incumbents are but rather what they are not doing. I didn’t for a moment mean to suggest that you saw this in political terms before you saw it in humanitarian terms so if I came across that as sounding like that I apologise. I just couldn’t see why you would want to get into the politics at all right now.

10

Aw Wombly, it’s just that the Blame Game has started even before the enormity has set in… that’s all. But I persist that for those who have access to radios and such, it would be comforting to hear that people are mobilizing, water and food is on its way and so forth, rather than just criticism. I

11

Plenty of that can be heard on the radio, just don’t listen to the national type of talking heads. Those folks have an agenda, on both sides of the political spectrum. Listen to the news, you’ll hear it.


All the Best, Tom

12

Yeah, but that’s not what many of the looters are going for. It’s the ones carrying TV’s, VCR’s, pushing entire racks of merchandise down the streets, those are the folks making it even worse. They have stolen guns and some have been shooting at helicopters delivering supplies to vicitims.

Don’t feel bad for ALL of the looters Wombat. I totally agree with you that folks need the food, water, etc. I’m not talking about those.

Tom

13

I heard on the news this morning that they had to suspend the evacuation of the Superdome because someone was shooting at the rescue helicopters which were bringing people from the city to the dome for evacuation. I guess we know what the looted guns are being used for now. :imp:

14

I know that genuine looting is going on. But I’d wager that some of the people with guns are desperate. They want to make sure they aren’t the ones left behind, even if it means carjacking. It’ll take a while before they can lower the lake levels enough to break the levees and start draining the city. Until then, most people are trapped. Since many haven’t eaten or had water since the storm hit, we can only hope that some way of getting serious emergency aid in has been sorted out by now. The longer the delay, the worse the chaos and the harder it will be to tell who is a real looter and who is just doing what it takes to survive.

15

I’m not blaming anybody. I don’t think there’s anyone to blame. I said something to a friend of mine this morning about the apparent absence of an crisis management plan and he pointed out that they had a crisis plan, that being to get people out, and that 80% of the population did get out. That’s something.

16

A small comfort. My daughter talked to her apartment-mates who confirm that their apartment is still there in Hattiesburg. No power or water. But it’s there.

17

I heard somewhere that this was a once in 500 years situation. I think it is sort of like the “big one” in California, except this happened now.

It seems that there is only so much money and, even though we know the “big one” is going to happen, on a daily basis that money is needed to save lives as well so then people have to decide what is more critical. If the “big one” happens in your lifetime, then the decisions seem maybe not good. If the “big one” didn’t happen in your lifetime, then it seems good for the money to have gone for what seem to be important social programs that feed people, provide medical care, etc.

To actually be ready for the “big one”, I think, would require huge warehouses full of trailers, food, water, helicopters, boats, hospital tents. And all these things would have to be kept in good condition, replaced regularly. Huge numbers of people, for whom there would normally be no work, would have to be on stand by.

When the “big one” hits California, I would think it would be like this too. And I do have a friend there who has some rucksacks on hand with essential things because she assumes she will be on her own for some period of time in a disaster.

I haven’t really heard criticism of the Red Cross or FEMA on the news, Weekenders. Perhaps I’ve not seen much.

The loss of civil order is, I guess, the result of a not very good decision—to pull the police off the streets and put them on search and rescue----although one that is understandable given the number of people stranded without water. If a person has lost everything and there is not much chance of getting anything soon, I’m sure the best of us might see a busted window, or bust one, and say I need some stuff. Stuff to eat, stuff to sell, stuff to trade, whatever. The trouble is it leads to worse things, people get frenzied, you get shop owners shooting people, looters shooting each other over a pair of jeans, looters robbing people passing by, mobs, riots, etc. It snowballs and people start getting killed. I had not thought about this much, but I believe now I could sort of understand the idea of shooting looters right off the bat regardless of the situation. More people will die if you don’t stop it right away. I don’t know what they can do now.

I really have no facts, nor am I trying to argue anything. It does seem as though the police, for example, would have had gasoline and food and water set by because they would likely be needed even in a much smaller hurricane. And the police will always have to stay in the disaster area. So that seems strange. But a lot of other things don’t seem that strange to me. I think there are logistics things that we probably just can’t know about.

The number of people that have lost everything and have no prospects for the future is almost more than a person can take in. I know this has happened for various reasons to huge groups of people before, but not in this country during my lifetime I guess.

One bright thing is that there are different cooperative associations for colleges, universities and the like who work together. I think that at some point, students who were going to schools that can’t open sometime soon are likely to be able to be placed in another school. The school where my husband works talked about that yesterday.

18

Thanks for a wise and clear-headed post.

19

You’d better not delete this thread. I may want to show what you said to some people. :laughing:

20

The thing that strikes me, aside from the scope of the tragedy, is the common sentiment to rebuild. While understandable, it seems like a case of not learning from a very expensive lesson. rebuilding a major city in the same vulnerable location would be foolish.