People died who did not believe the Government when told to evacuate

Unless told by a superior to do so, or unless they were temporarily impaired, I totally agree.


To prove the paperwork exists may be a problem, I imagine a lot of the staff records are currently underwater and the paperwork itself may not be salvagable.

That quote that i wrote is`nt my oppinion i was refering to ET`s original post where he claims the people there are stupid because they had prior warning,if you misunderstood my post?
I thought i`d made my self clear from a number of posts how i veiw it.

1) It has been public knowledge since the Kennedy administration that the levees could not stand up against a slow category 3, and category 4 or above hurricane.

2) It has been public knowledge since 1962.

3) It has been public knowledge that the region is prone to hurricanes.

4) The people had 40+ years to get over thier complacency.

People in Cali voiced their opinions and got building codes to enforce more earthquake resistant buildings.

Why were the people of NO not so inclined as to ensure the survivial of their future residents over the past 40+ years?

Huh? I would think that 40+ years is what would create complacency.

Have you ever had to evacuate on foot in bad weather??

I've had some experience along those lines.....I live in an area where tornados are not unheard of...not tornado alley, so don't call me stupid for living in the direct path on a daily basis. Years ago when I first started out on my own, I bought a piece of land, but all I could afford for housing was an old mobile home. So one fine spring day, the skies grew dark, the wind whipped up....so I turned on the radio, to catch the weather.

Pretty soon, the announcer was yelling, "Get out of your mobile homes, but don't get in your car!! Get to a solid shelter, or go lay in a depression or ditch!" The location he gave for the sighted tornado was practically in my back yard.

OK, but, I was too far from the next house ( couple of miles) to head for there without using my car.....so I headed for the ditch by the road at the end of the drive. By then it was pouring rain and hailing.....do you know how hard hard hail hits, even the small stuff?? The ditch was pretty full of water already and the debris in the air seemed a pretty big risk to my hide....I looked back at that old trailer.....it seemed to be taking things better than I was so I headed back to it......we avoided a direct hit by the tornado, or we both might have gone to OZ. Not to say I did the right thing, but at that moment, it seemed to be my best poor choice.

Some of those people were faced with ride it out or walk out into it....and that's NOT always easy to do!

I read some of the arguments in here and others I did not.

First and formost I would like to address poor people. If you are not disabled in some manner or old then you are only poor in america because you are a useless lazy person. The Army is Hireing.

There is a guy from Bolivia right now on a work passport working at a Tom Thumb around th corner from my house working 16 hour days bringing in nearly 4k per month to bring back home to his faimily after his 4 month work visa is done. He can barely speak english and that store is always hiring. If no jobs were you live then move and find one. Stop being lazy and you will stop being poor.

If you stayed in NO and died you were stupid somewere along the line of your life if you are not a disabled person.

While the Mayor should have offered up busses to the Poor and especiailly the disabled he is only guilty of not helping the disabled get out as much as he could have. As for the stupid and poor. Well it is just stupid to be poor and that is not the governments fault.

FEMA did the best they could do. Its not like you can have a plan for every single thing that can happen to people. No way to know what a storm might do and I do not want to waste my tax dollars trying to plan and equip for every possible contengency even if we could Imagine all possible disasters and there effects.

If your told to evacuate, even voluntary. You should. Period. Your a moron and possibly dead if you dont.

I will pray for those who lost loved ones but people have to use their brains.


X

[edit on 8-9-2005 by Xeven]

The compassion here is overwhelming. Like i said before, with no money, no car, a bunch of kids, you have to have a destination? Obviously too many of you cant understand this because you or your parents have 3 cars parked out front and can head anywhere. Not all the world lives like this.
Some people are Po. Real Po. Unless you can understand this you have no business making comments that make no sense.

Grandpa on a wheelchair, grandma with dementia, kids counting on then to do the right thing- No money at all..not even enough to get on a bus. No next of kin. Why some of these people have never left the area, in fact they consider it their world. Also among the poor is also the uneducated thru no fault of their own. Uneducated people by nature and lack of education really dont know what could be waiting for them somewhere else.
Its extremely scary for them to pick up and leave.

Give them a break. They're humans, for the love of Pete.

I do agree they should leave as i've said before...Using tact, counselling, yes, there is time to counsel these people as to what to expect. Use a little love and compassion and most will give in.

I am so afraid they will be gassed out of there or worse.

I have both compassion and empathy for each and every victim of this natural dissaster. I truly acknowledge that certain government agencies FAILED to deliver the justification for their existance.

Why?

FEAR.

It is the fear of terrorists that lead the American government to listen to the voices of those who had chosen to speak up and call for government agencies to work more closely together to keep all Americans safe.

The Department of Homeland Security was given top authority, and for all intensive purposes USURPED FEMA who is now lead by a guy that for the better half of the 1990s was the president of an orginization that judged arabian horses, and then got fired from that job.

He was appointed as FEMA director in 2003. Plenty of time for people to say "WHAT?"

I have compassion and empathy for people who both had the means to prepare, and those who did not. They need our help, and deserve it.

At the fundamental level people are responsible for preparing, both you and your fellow citizens are both responsible and accountible for this national disgrace and national blunder, or this just is not truly a DEMOCRACY, then is it?

I have both compassion and empathy for each and every victim of this natural dissaster. I truly acknowledge that certain government agencies FAILED to deliver the justification for their existance.

Why?

FEAR.

It is the fear of terrorists that lead the American government to listen to the voices of those who had chosen to speak up and call for government agencies to work more closely together to keep all Americans safe.

The Department of Homeland Security was given top authority, and for all intensive purposes USURPED FEMA who is now lead by a guy that for the better half of the 1990s was the president of an orginization that judged arabian horses, and then got fired from that job.

He was appointed as FEMA director in 2003. Plenty of time for people to say "WHAT?"

I have compassion and empathy for people who both had the means to prepare, and those who did not. They need our help, and deserve it.

At the fundamental level people are responsible for preparing, both you and your fellow citizens are both responsible and accountible for this national disgrace and national blunder, or this just is not truly a DEMOCRACY, then is it?

I have both compassion and empathy for each and every victim of this natural dissaster. I truly acknowledge that certain government agencies FAILED to deliver the justification for their existance.

Why?

FEAR.

It is the fear of terrorists that lead the American government to listen to the voices of those who had chosen to speak up and call for government agencies to work more closely together to keep all Americans safe.

The Department of Homeland Security was given top authority, and for all intensive purposes USURPED FEMA who is now lead by a guy that for the better half of the 1990s was the president of an orginization that judged arabian horses, and then got fired from that job.

He was appointed as FEMA director in 2003. Plenty of time for people to say "WHAT?"

I have compassion and empathy for people who both had the means to prepare, and those who did not. They need our help, and deserve it.

At the fundamental level people are responsible for preparing, both you and your fellow citizens are both responsible and accountible for this national disgrace and national blunder, or this just is not truly a DEMOCRACY, then is it?

Sorry, I have NO idea why that same response posted 3 times.

The Edward R. Murrow Technique


I know why: because if you say it three times, we're more likely to remember it.

If this government told THE TRUTH and was beleivable, i reckon more people would obey. As it turns out, that is not the case.

Looking at the pictures that are coming out of NO, you will notice there is little wind damage....most of the trees are still standing, the roofs are still on the houses, because the main brunt of the hurricane, the high winds, actually missed them.

To the people huddled in their houses, it may have sounded like the worst was over, they may even have heard on the radio that the main force of the storm would go more toward Mississippi....they would have been ok, untill the levee gave and the water began to rise. Until that moment, the storm may have seemed no worst than a lot of others they had weathered over the years.

I think it's unfair and callous to call them stupid and ignorant....these people have survived by their wits for years. Undoubtly they based some of their decisions on their experiences in years past. Look at it from their perspective.

Esoteric Teacher, you are forgetting that many who were intelligent enough and had means to do so DID evacuate. You are trying to blame those who weren't intelligent enough and/or had no means to evacuate for remaining, but you overlook that both the evacuation order and the National Weather Service alert was not given until less than 24 hours remained for an evacuation. Without a car or place to go, where exactly were people supposed to end up (aside from the Superdome and other predesignated shelters) in this time frame? Keep in mind that when faced with a category 5 hurricane, being caught in the open when it hits can be fatal, regardless of whether or not you are on high ground.

Were there some arrogant fools who chose to stay knowing full the danger and having means to get out? Of course. But the number of these types of people was tiny in comparision to the number of people who simply could not evacuate in the amount of time given.

-koji K.



[edit on 8-9-2005 by koji_K]

Hey, yo. Let me tell you something.

I grew up poor. I grew up moving between apartments we had to go without food to afford even though they were hell holes to live in. I grew up in and out of homeless shelters. My parents worked their butts off to try to get us "out of poverty." My father has a master's degree in psychology from an accredited university. He couldn't find a good living wage job, despite that. Now I suffer from serious health problems because of how we lived when I was a child, but I'm still trying my damndest to "get out of poverty."

I chose long ago, as did my parents before me, to "not be a victim." But I am a victim of society's ills. That is a fact. I don't want to be treated like a victim. There is a difference. I don't want sympathy or underserved help for it. All I want is to survive, and find a little spot in the sun now and then, where I can find some small measure of happiness and get away from the derogatory, narrow minded class bigotry of people like you.

The dead left in the wake of Katrina's path are comprised of people you know nothing about. As is true of anywhere, there were good folks and bad folks. Some of them could have gotten out if they had tried harder. Some couldn't. It doesn't matter. You don't have any moral authority that grants you the power to badmouth the dead. It could one day be your mother, your father, your brother, your sister, your child, your grandfather, your grandmother, your best friend... it could very well even be you. You aren't psychic. You can't go back in time and see whether people were sitting idly by while the storm bore down on them. You can't walk back to the day the levees broke, and watch as people who had been trying to get out of the city for the last three days but couldn't because they had no car, no means of transportation, not enough food to travel by foot, etc. wade through constantly rising water all around them.

Bottom line: you don't know. Therefore, you cannot judge. Furthermore, you know nothing of what poverty in the United States of America entails, or you would know that the entire economic structure of the nation (and I don't care whether anyone believes that to be intentional or not, because I have no opinion on that) is designed in such a way that it makes it as hard as possible to "get out of poverty," no matter how quickly one decides to "not be a victim," and no matter how hard they try. It does happen, and it is possible, but a person born into poverty has the deck stacked against them. Unless you have lived it, you cannot understand that. If you have, then hats off to you for being luckier than most of us and finding a way to a better place in your life for you and yours. I am happy for you (and that is not meant to be sarcasm).

There are people much deeper in poverty than I am. For their sake I pray people like you can find and embrace a broadening of minds.

I guess maybe I'm looking at the picture from a bigger perspective.

It was known that the levees would not hold up to this kind of storm in 1962. It was public knowledge to the locals.

SO, am I to believe that all those who feel the residents are devoid of any responsability for their government in a DEMOCRACY?

Why wasn't the collective consciousness acting on their own behalf?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1962?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1963?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1964?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1965?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1966?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1967?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1968?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1969?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1970?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1971?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1972?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1973?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1974?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1975?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1976?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1977?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1978?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1979?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1980?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1981?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1982?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1983?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1984?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1985?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1986?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1987?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1988?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1989?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1990?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1991?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1992?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1993?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1994?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1995?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1996?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1997?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1998?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 1999?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 2000?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 2001?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 2002?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 2003?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 2004?

Where were the citizens of New Orleans in uproar in 2005?

If people in New Orleans were open minded enough to look at the big picture of just their own city, and extend thought outside of what is most self serving and the distractions of everyday life, then where were those of the populas of NO to complain about a safety hazard that was known would destroy the city in 1962?

Please, I'm not against the poor, just the stupid people who had been informed about the immenent possibility of just such an occurence since 1962, and did not act upon it, OBVIOUSLY!!!!!

And no one but the government agencies are to blame?

Then if that is the case, how does a society create true leaders, when no private citizen has any responsibility? GOOD LUCK GROWING WHAT YOU SEEK, someone responsible for it all, when no one is responsible for themselves.

If I understand, you are saying, we should hold all these individuals to account for the choices they made. I say that we should hold the elected officials (state, local, and federal), and those appointed to deal with these disasters, to account for their choices. They were the ones who held positions of responsibility over others, while the individuals were merely responsible for themselves. A man responsible for himself should not be blamed by others for making choices which only he himself is now paying for. Men responsible for other men should be blamed by others for making choices which others now pay for.

Frankly, we've all made bad decisions in our lives at one point or another. Everyone has. The difference here is that these people are paying the highest price for it. They don't need blame, save it for where it should be allocated. Blaming the authorities might just bring change, alleviating a future Katrina. Blaming the victims doesn't help anyone.


-koji K.

[edit on 8-9-2005 by koji_K]

[edit on 8-9-2005 by koji_K]

Then why not place people in power they can trust?

Simple answer:

The society does not produce such a creature.

But not the people who provided them with the power and continually neglected the hazards that led to such a catastrophy?



The ones who held positions of responsibility are placed in positions of responsibility by people who are not responsible for those in positions of responsibility?



It was blaming the authorities for 9-11 that directly led the authorities to make the changes that dis-empowered FEMA and made it subserviant to the "Flavor of Fear of the Day" and to the Department of Homeland Security. It is that change in chain of command that slowed the process down with beauracracy.

And, it was the people who chose the people who made that choice for them, without much of a whine or whimper.