Katrina, and government failure, killed about 10,000 people in New Orleans alone, leaving another 500,000 refugees homeless and jobless. But the
city's Audobon Zoo lost only three of its 1,400 animals - it had good emergency management plans. Critics charge racism, claiming the federal
government stalled relief efforts on purpose to 'cull the herd,' and implement a 'cultural triage' policy targeted at America's poor and black.
Diplomats remind us that mother nature's power surpasses even advanced technologies, and say bureaucracy is slow. Reports from outside the US
emphasize the human tragedy, and the inevitable impacts on a world economy already destabilized by US debt. The mainstream US right highlights the
property damage, looting, and lawlessness; the left focuses on the human tragedies created by poverty and ill health, saying many residents were
unable to evacuate, that many left behind are shell-shocked, and "not themselves." President Bush admitted the early relief effort was
"unacceptable," but does not accept responsibility for the fiasco; critics say America needs a President who
is responsible. Public attention
is directed to the question, "Should New Orleans be rebuilt?" A minority is looking to the future, pointing to climate change, and telling people
there's more to come.
"Mayor expects death toll to top 10,000"
Katrina death toll
may be 10,000
"Hurricane Katrina displaced over 500,000 people in the Gulf Coast
region."
"Baton Rouge, the Louisiana state capital, doubled in population overnight
from 250,000 to over 500,000 as refugees poured in,..."
"Displaced and desperate: “They haven’t slept, they’ve run out of
money, they’ve maxed out on their cards,”...They are jobless, homeless and worried."
"Places have to be found for these people. Many of
these people may never be able to rebuild."
***
"While the city's human population suffered enormously, its famous Audubon Zoo managed to take good care of its charges. Only three of its 1,400
animals died, officials said, adding that they had planned for years for a catastrophic storm."
New
Orleans police kill looters in shoot-out
***
"The overwhelming majority of those stranded in the post-Katrina chaos were those without the resources to escape - and, overwhelmingly, they were
black. ...
The first few days were a natural disaster. The last four days were a man-made
disaster," said Phillip Holt, 51,... the bodies are everywhere: hidden in attics, floating among the ruined city, crumpled on wheelchairs,
abandoned on highways. And the dying goes on...
***
"People living in the path of Hurricane Katrina's worst devastation were twice as likely as most Americans to be poor and without a car - factors that
may help explain why so many failed to evacuate as the storm approached. ...
One of the worst-hit neighborhoods in the heart of New Orleans, for
example, had a median household income of less than $7,500. Nearly three of every four residents fell below the poverty line, and barely 1 in 3 people
had a car.
"
Let them know we're not bums. We have houses. Our houses were destroyed. We have jobs. It's not our fault that we didn't have cars to leave,"
Shatonia Thomas, 27, said as she walked near New Orleans' convention center five days after the storm, still trapped in the destruction with her
children, ages 6 and 9.
Money and transportation - two keys to surviving a natural disaster - were inaccessible for many who got left behind in the
Gulf region's worst squalor.
Jack Harrald, director of the Institute for Crisis, Disaster and Risk Management at George Washington University in Washington, said
emergency
planners have known for years that the poverty and lack of transportation in New Orleans would be a significant problem..."
Katrina's victims poorer than U.S. average
***
"The media focus on desperate, starving victims as "looters," cover up much larger crimes of governmental neglect and incompetence. ...Race has always
been the undercurrent of Louisiana politics. This disaster is one that was constructed out of racism, neglect and incompetence. ...While the rich
escaped New Orleans, those with nowhere to go and no way to get there were left behind. ...No sane person should classify someone who takes food from
indefinitely closed stores in a desperate, starving city as a "looter," but that's just what the media did over and over again. Sheriffs and
politicians talked of having troops protect stores instead of perform rescue operations.
City, state and national politicians are the real criminals here. Since at least the mid-1800s, its been widely known the danger faced by flooding to
New Orleans. The flood of 1927, which, like this week's events, was more about politics and racism than any kind of natural disaster, illustrated
exactly the danger faced. Yet government officials have consistently refused to spend the money to protect this poor, overwhelmingly black, city.
While FEMA and others warned of the urgent impending danger to New Orleans and put forward proposals for funding to reinforce and protect the city,
the Bush administration, in every year since 2001, has cut or refused to fund New Orleans flood control, and ignored scientists warnings of increased
hurricanes as a result of global warming. And, as the dangers rose with the floodlines, the lack of coordinated response dramatized vividly the
callous disregard of our elected leaders.
Notes From Inside New Orleans
***
Dr. Jeff Johnson, a professor at the University of Maryland's School of Medicine said the images of the black poor struggling in the New Orleans chaos
should be a "powerful wake up call." ..."The message is that these people are in some sense abandoned, and that's why they're so angry,"...Rep. Diane
Watson, a black Democrat from California said "Shame, shame on America. We were put to the test and we have failed." ...Larry E. Davis, director of
the University of Pittsburgh's Centre on Race and Social Problems said the images of the disaster are an embarrassment to this nation. ... "It's as
though you are looking at a picture of an African country."
Race issue haunts President Bush
***
" "Hurricane Katrina, ...is giving our nation a glimpse of the climate chaos we are bequeathing our children." ...A 2003 report on climate change in
the Gulf Coast region released by the Union of Concerned Scientists said that "coastal flooding and erosion will increase because rising sea levels
will generate higher storm surges even from minor storms."
"Whether or not global warming increases the number or intensity of hurricanes, future storm damages are likely to rise substantially because of the
increased amount of development in harm's way and the aggravating impacts of higher sea levels and degraded coastal ecosystems," said the report."
Hurricanes and Climate Change
Please visit the link provided for the complete story.
Katrina shone a spotlight on the natural disasters threatening America, and put her inadequacies under a microscope.
...what really happened was that a "Complex Problem" revealed itself. Like a game of Pick Up Sticks, people had made a series of poor decisions that
they could not see were related to each other until one day, New Orleans fell over.
The Lessons of New Orleans - Complex Problems
Some of the poor decisions are obvious: Homeland Security's focus on terrorism hampered FEMA's ability to respond to natural disasters, just like
state emergency managers warned would happen. The feds made personnel changes, and hired spooks to run the show; the new bosses do not have experience
in emergency management. National coffers were emptied to take over Afghanistan and Iraq - now, there isn't any money left for ordinary Americans'
emergencies.
As recently as three weeks ago, state emergency managers urged Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and his deputy, Michael P. Jackson, to
ease the department's focus on terrorism, warning that the shift away from traditional disaster management left FEMA a bureaucratic backwater less
able to respond to natural events such as hurricanes and earthquakes.
Bruce P. Baughman, Alabama emergency management director, head of the National Emergency Management Association and the official in charge of FEMA's
response to the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks in 2001, said Katrina will leave its mark on federal disaster management. "It's time to
realize, whoever is in charge of FEMA does need an emergency management background. . . . It's something you learn by experience, and a lot of that
experience is gone," he said.
FEMA Director Singled Out by Response Critics
***
" "We authorized $8 billion to go to Iraq, lickety split. After 9/11 we gave the president unauthorized powers, lickety split to help New York and
other places," he said. "You mean to tell me that a place where most of your oil is coming through ... that we can't figure out a way to authorize the
resources that we need," said (New Orleans mayor) Nagin.
[ulr=http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2005/09/02/ray_nagin20050902.html]Radio link here: New Orleans mayor blasts federal government[/url]
Whomever might be responsible, or irresponsible, the problem of dealing with Katrina's aftermath remains. It can only be handled by answering the
question, "What is the real priority?" or "What comes first: Profits or people?" What happens next depends on the answer to that question.
Things
are happening now. Suddenly, after leaving people stranded in the eye of the storm, and leaving survivors for days without food, water,
or medical care, it's imperative
right now that
everyone evacuate, forthwith. Those left behind may
not stay. It's not an option
to remain in New Orleans, insists Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.
"Chertoff said rescuers have encountered a number of people who said they did not want to evacuate.
..."That is not a reasonable alternative," he said. "We are not going to be able to have people
sitting in houses in the city of New Orleans for weeks and months while we de-water and clean this city.""
***
"...police pleaded with remaining survivors to abandon the city. ...''There are no jobs. There are no homes to go to, no hotels to go to, there is
absolutely nothing here,'' Deputy Police Chief Warren Riley said. ''We advise
people that this city has been destroyed, it has completely been destroyed.''"
But what's the real problem here? The crisis is over. Why force people out if they don't want to leave? What have we got to offer 500,000 displaced
American refugees? New jobs? New homes? Start-over funds?
Existent emergency facilities are overcrowded and mismanaged:
"It took several days for food and water to reach the tens of thousands of desperate New Orleans
residents who took shelter in the increasingly squalid and deadly Superdome and city convention centre."
"The last bedraggled refugees were rescued from the Superdome on Saturday and
the convention center was all but cleared, leaving the heart of New Orleans to the dead and dying, the elderly and frail stranded too many days
without food, water or medical care."
"Nita LaGarde, 105, was pushed down the street in her wheelchair as her nurse's 5-year-old granddaughter, Tanisha Blevin, held her hand. The pair
spent two days in an attic, two days on an interstate island and the last four days on the pavement in front of the convention centre.
...LaGarde's nurse, Ernestine Dangerfield, 60, said LaGarde had not had a
clean adult diaper in more than two days. "I just want to get somewhere where I can get her nice and clean," she said."
FEMA just rented three cruise liners with a total of 7,000 berths - hotel rooms, tent cities, and maybe some small trailers might be available to
the remaining 493,000 homeless:
"...the U.S. government has chartered three luxury cruise liners - Ecstacy, Sensation and Holiday - for the next half year, to provide temporary
housing for victims of Hurricane Katrina. Two of the ships, the Ecstasy and Sensation, have a maximum capacity of 2,606 people each and will be based
in Galveston, Texas. The third, the Holiday, has a maximum capacity of 1,800, and will likely be docked in Mobile, Ala.
...Carnival Cruise Lines would not reveal how much FEMA was paying
to charter the ships."
***
"Alabama has offered about room for about 2,500 in shelters or hotels. ...For those who want to stay,
Mississippi officials say they will eventually offer temporary housing in tents or
in 20,000 small trailers that have been ordered. ...The idea of tents only adds to Renee Chambless' fears. "You can't trust anybody. If you
sleep in those tents, you might wake up and see your daughter being carried off and raped," Chambless said."
"The main thing for us is the kids," ...They're separated from their
friends, their everyday activities, their school. The waiting list for schools is incredible."
There is little reason to believe any of these new temporary facilities will be managed better than the Superdome was, or that new promises might
be kept better than the last:
" "I would rather have been in jail," Janice Jones said in obvious relief at being out of the Superdome. "I've been in there seven days and I haven't
had a bath. They treated us like animals. Everybody is
scared." ...The Astrodome's new residents will be issued passes that will let them leave and return as they please, something that wasn't
permitted in New Orleans."
"Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, just outside New Orleans, broke down on Meet the Press when he talked about people who waited for
help. ..."They were told like me, every single day, the cavalry's coming, on a federal level. The
cavalry's coming, the cavalry's coming, the cavalry's coming. I have just begun to hear the hoofs of the cavalry ...," Broussard said."
" "The guy who runs this building I'm in, emergency management, he's responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home,
and every day she called him and said, 'Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?' And he said, 'And
yeah, Momma, somebody's coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's
coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday' - and she drowned Friday night. She
drowned on Friday night." "
"What will happen to the refugees in the long term was not known."
Some officials say disease will be a problem in the wreckage, to justify the new evacuation orders, but the Center for Disease Control says no,
"infectious diseases following hurricanes are rare in developed countries such as the United States."
Many officials have warned of infectious diseases from the toxic flood waters in New Orleans in coming weeks, but the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it did not expect serious
outbreaks. ...Decaying bodies create very little risk for major disease outbreaks, and the CDC noted that outbreaks of infectious diseases following
hurricanes are rare in developed countries such as the United States. It said foodborne illness such as salmonella poisoning was more likely.
Many so-called looters and shooters left in New Orleans simply are exercising traditional American independence, ingenuity, and adaptability - and
choosing to go it alone, and survive, without depending on incompetent governments. They won't be rounded up, herded, and shipped like cattle to
slaughter. They are defending their independence and their rights, with guns, because Americans have a right to bear arms, and defend themselves
against the government when necessary. It's the American way, and the promise that put Bush in the Whitehouse.
The survivors who want to stay in New Orleans know they can make a go of it. They can live on abandoned damaged goods, and rebuild by scavenging from
the rubble. Worse things have happened, even in America.
"Kenny Lason, 45, a dishwasher at Pat O'Brien's, a French Quarter restaurant famous for its signature "Hurricane" cocktail, took a long slurp out of a
bottle of Korbel extra dry champagne. He broke a store window to get it, and he is not ashamed.
"They wasn't giving us nothing," he said. "You got to live off the land."
***
" "Calvin Norris, 58, looked like a Mississippi River steamboat as he pushed a shopping cart through the brackish water while puffing on a cigarette.
But like dozens of other holdouts living in the neighborhood's shotgun-style houses and second-floor apartments, Norris wouldn't even consider
leaving. ..."Because I got my house," he said. "The water isn't in the house like it was when it first started."
Despite official warnings that New Orleans will be without food, water, electricity and jobs for months, the holdouts are determined to stay with
their property, afraid that if they leave they might never be able to come back. ..."If you go, they take you to Texas," said Elizabeth Franklin, 65,
as she stood on her only porch step not under water. "I don't know anybody in Texas. I don't know how I'm going to get back."
Gelanto Gbollie, 46, stood bare-chested in black jeans on a second-floor apartment balcony with the railing and roof blown off. ..."We're trying to
secure the building because we've got a lot of stuff here," Gbollie said. ..."I don't need you, homeboy," Arthur Alexis, 55, shouted back. "I've been
doing this for 40 years. This ain't nothing to me." "
Thanks but no thanks, New Orleans holdouts tell rescuers
***
"Not all New Orleans residents wanted out. ''They'll have to drag me out by
my feet,'' said Mike Reed, 49, as he swept debris from the streets of the city's historic French Quarter..."
***
"The people who have chosen to stay or are stuck in demolished communities along the Mississippi coast scavenge for basics each day, as convoys of
soldiers and supplies pass them by, headed for the nearly empty city of New Orleans. ...Some are staying with the hope of rebuilding their
communities. Others say they would leave if only they could get a ride. All agree that with no water or power, probably for months to come, they need
more help from the government just to survive. ...
"I have been all over the world. I've been in a lot of Third World countries where
people were better off than the people here are right now," retired Air Force Capt. William Bissell said Monday."
There is a big psychological difference between those who have chosen to stay, and those prevented from leaving by circumstance.
Lavone Lollar, 34, and her three children have been living with 75 others in an Ocean Springs shelter that smells like dirty diapers. ...She fears the
psychological toll the disaster is taking on those slowly realizing they've lost everything.
"You talk to somebody one minute, they're OK," she said. "The next, the devil's
starting to get into them."
The ones who choose to stay are squatters, not criminals. They are Americans, making the best of a bad situation. The smart ones are scared stiff of
the only alternative they're offered - relocation, with no guarantees of a home, income, water, food, or medical care - maybe permanent temporary
relocation camps. Who knows?
Government created this crisis of confidence - now they're shooting Americans who are strong enough, and independent enough, to make their own way.
Instead of applauding survivors for their Yankee gumption, the government is prosecuting. For shame.
"Trials are expected to begin within two weeks, ...We're going to bring these guys to
justice," (said New Orleans U.S. Attorney Jim Letten).
It doesn't make sense. Now that the danger is past, officials want everyone out. No scavenging allowed. But most everything is going to be written off
anyway - insurance companies already are processing claims. So why?
Why call scavenging 'looting,' and prosecute the ecologically responsible?
Is somebody getting kickbacks on salvage? Is that part of the "clean-up contract"? Will contractors have rights to salvage, and be paid twice, with
our tax dollars and donations too? Is that why survivors are being forced out, to get rid of competition
and witnesses?
Cities are rebuilt from rubble, by individual survivors. It's a human tradition, dating back hundreds of thousands of years. If the government knows
this can't happen in New Orleans, this time, then tell the people the truth. Be honest. In the meantime...
You go, New Orleans. Go Thomas, LaGarde, Dangerfield, Lason, Jones, Norris, Franklin, Gbollie, Alexis, Reed. Go everyone. Don't get stomped again.
Fight for your rights. Your homes. Your futures. And don't give up. You are not alone.
"Maybe it comes back stronger," says political strategist and commentator James Carville, known as the Ragin' Cajun. "No one forgot how to play the
saxophone or how to cook or write. Or have a good time. That's all still there.
Calamities and disasters are part of New Orleans' history. This too shall
pass."
-soficrow
Also see:
U.S. groups aiding foreign refugees offer help to Katrina evacuees
Poor face dilemma in cities taking Katrina evacuees
Texas gets labor grant to help Katrina evacuees
Resources:
Katrina Information Map - for people "affected by Hurricane Katrina who have or are trying to find information about the status of specific locations
affected by the storm and its aftermath." The map was created by 24-year-old Jonathan Mendez, a former New Orleans resident and computer
programmer.
www.scipionus.com...
Help:
Adopt a Katrina Family
Support The Salvation Army's Hurricane Katrina relief efforts by making a monetary donation at
www.salvationarmyusa.org... or by calling
1-800-SAL-ARMY.
Climate Information:
Wikipedia: Effects of global warming
en.wikipedia.org...
Inter Press News: The Endless Hurricane Season
www.ipsnews.net...
National Geographic News: In U.S., Climate Change May Hit Southeast Hardest
news.nationalgeographic.com...
Susanne Moser, Ph.D. (Union of Concerned Scientists): The Potential Impacts Of Global Warming On Our Coasts And Oceans
www.climatehotmap.org...
The Nation: Climate, the Absent Issue
www.thenation.com...
Talk about ingratitude! Sure, the rescue could probably have been organized more efficiently, but geez,
these people are just trying to help, and what thanks do they get? There is breaking the law to survive (like taking food from a shopping mall) and
then there is breaking the law because you are an idiot pointing firearms at people and pulling the trigger. People need to WORK TOGETHER to get
through this horrible natural disaster, not fight with each other. Less people will die if cooperation and goodwill are practiced towards each other.
