New Orleans evacuation

[:FI:RULES]

Hmm, tough one Gen...The thing is not to get political about it...
We need to stay in a humanitarian mindframe for this type of situations.

Big problem for the US right now might be that the presidency have forgoten just that in the dealings with other countrys population in need.(Sudan,Iraq´s oil for food,and so on) What goes around....

I hope that we all can set the politics and past wrongs aside and get to work...

Oddly enough the US government have turned down all offers of help and wants to cope with this gigantic task on it´s own...


My 2 cent...

[:FI:Snaphoo]

The odd thing is, I doubt there are many Bush supporters in that area right now. Not that odd really when you consider they were completely abandoned. But that is another story.

I am not sure, but I believe the Red Cross takes donations from their website the world over. If someone abroad feels compelled to help these people, who have little to nothing to do with the President (or his decisions), then I say more power to them. They need all the help that they can get after being completely ignored for 4 days while the rest of the US was told that "they couldn't have known", or that "they were completely devestated by the destruction" rather than getting in there and helping out.

Point is, help if you're so inclined, don't if you're not. They could use your help. If politics will affect your decision, then I would wonder if you're actually seeing the problem as it is. This shouldn't be politicized and run into the ground while these people suffer. These people should be helped, then we should fire/impeach whomever dropped the biggest ball, then work down.

[:FI:Snoop Baron]

Well said Snaphoo.

Snoop

[:FI:WillieOFS]

FOr some REAL info on the events leading up to the mess in NO, read this blogspot..

http://www.snookerswamp.blogspot.com/

The info is a LOT more direct as to who screwed the pooch on that mess, than that which you will hear spouted by the mainstream media.

I also heard this morning that the affected area of devastation is approximately 90,000 square miles!! Bigger than Great Britain and about the size of the state of Kansas!

As for Bush slamming, he isn't my favorite person, BUT, the last time I looked he didn't design New Orleans, nor does he have enough clout to summon a Cat 5 storm. That town has led a charmed life until last week. Nearly all of No's problems were brought about by the local governments over the town's life.

[:FI:Heloego]

No more ranting from me. I got it out of my system.

Recent news:

The Mayor of New Orleans has authorized officers to forcibly remove people from their homes "for their own safety".
I can see both sides of this:
1. The water still covers 60% of the city and surounding areas. This water is full of fecal matter from the sewage and treatment systems, and it is confirmed that E-Coli is in the water. Just wading through it is very dangerous. At least one person (an elderly woman) is confirmed dead from Gangrene she got from walking through it with an open wound (surgery). Until sanitation is restored it can only get worse, and it may up to 3 weeks before all the water is pumped out. Now that the levees are plugged, anyway.
2. I know quite a few of the Cajuns. I can just imagine the arguments and possible fights that will erupt when the NOPD shows up on some of those doorsteps, good intentions or no. Some people just won't leave home.

Electricity has been restored in a few sections of downtown N.O.. MSNBC and CNN both showed videos of one of the Hilton Hotels with power.

Guard units and NOPD are working together to stop the looting , but snipers have started up again.


Things will get back to normal. It's just gonna be awhile.

The world response to the event has really been heartening. Thank You!

[:FI:Genosse]

Point is, help if you're so inclined, don't if you're not. They could use your help. If politics will affect your decision, then I would wonder if you're actually seeing the problem as it is. This shouldn't be politicized and run into the ground while these people suffer. These people should be helped, then we should fire/impeach whomever dropped the biggest ball, then work down.

Well, that´s not what I´ve said, mate. Supporting the Bush administration by giving donation was just one arguement of the callers but not mine. I agree with you that the suffering people need help first ... after that chop off some political heads. No doubt about that.

But as this disaster has already its political effects. Affecting the question who´s been responsible for the Emergency Management up to "Will mankind be faced with distasters like this more often in the next future?" and "What can mankind do about it?".

Every bill/check has to be paid ...

[:FI:Snaphoo]

Well, that´s not what I´ve said, mate. Supporting the Bush administration by giving donation was just one arguement of the callers but not mine. I agree with you that the suffering people need help first ... after that chop off some political heads. No doubt about that.

But as this disaster has already its political effects. Affecting the question who´s been responsible for the Emergency Management up to "Will mankind be faced with distasters like this more often in the next future?" and "What can mankind do about it?".

Every bill/check has to be paid ...

If you'll look closely mate, I didn't quote you at all. I suppose it was Rules' statement about whether or not to donate based on Bush's decisions abroad, if I'm honest. My comment was not intended to offend. The only thing that can be done in situations like this one, or a Tsunami, or other natural disaster is prepare for the worst, and then pay for the cleanup.

It is in the preparation that some of the Gulf Coast states failed. Failure isn't a crime, unless it's negligence. It's just fact at this point. The local people of the areas were failed by their immediate governments on up to their federal government.

Big problem for the US right now might be that the presidency have forgoten just that in the dealings with other countrys population in need.(Sudan,Iraq´s oil for food,and so on) What goes around....

So, because of Bush's decisions, the people of the Gulf Coast region should suffer? What comes around goes around after all, right? This statement alone offended me as a human being.

I hope that we all can set the politics and past wrongs aside and get to work...

I agree completely with this statement.

Oddly enough the US government have turned down all offers of help and wants to cope with this gigantic task on it´s own...

I haven't seen anywhere that we've declined any offers of help. BP has pledged/donated $10m. Other globally diverse companies have donated as well. France has offered/donated to the cause. So this statement, as far as I can tell, is false.


I understand what you were saying Gen. I even understand the sentiments of Rules. Bush has made it hard for countries abroad to help us. My point was, see past the moron in office, and help the people who need help or don't if you're not going to do so. But don't politicise it. By helping the people affected, you will not be supporting Bush, but you will be supporting the humanity affected by this storm.

Although I'm sure it is inevitable, I meant no harm in any of my posts. I did not mean to offend. As I'm sure no one meant to offend me.

I told myself I wouldn't rant anymore... I have failed again...

I will appologize now if I offended anyone.

[Guest]

To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a description from a Washington Times story:

"Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists, knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and police and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on.

"The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen poured in to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire....

"Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened Arkansas National Guard members were inside New Orleans with shoot-to-kill orders.

" 'These troops are...under my orders to restore order in the streets,' she said. 'They have M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will.' "



The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article shows National Guard troops, with rifles and armored vests, riding on an armored vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a rabble of squalid, listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling at them. It looks exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad.

What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for an orgy of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to storm the very buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the drivers to drive away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Super Dome?

Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing further destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying to help them?

My wife, Sherri, figured it out first, and she figured it out on a sense-of-life level. While watching the coverage last night on Fox News Channel, she told me that she was getting a familiar feeling. She studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Chicago, which is located in the South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in America. "The projects," as they were known, were infamous for uncontrollable crime and irremediable squalor. (They have since, mercifully, been demolished.)

What Sherri was getting from last night's television coverage was a whiff of the sense of life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"--the informational phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news channels--gave some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane, and of the 300,000 or so who remained, a large number were from the city's public housing projects. Jack Wakeland then gave me an additional, crucial fact: early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the city's jails--so they just let many of them loose. There is no doubt a significant overlap between these two populations--that is, a large number of people in the jails used to live in the housing projects, and vice versa.

There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hit--but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups: criminals--and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep--on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves.

All of this is related, incidentally, to the apparent incompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. But in a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political supporters--not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency.

No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In fact, some are already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for example, for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans had drafted an adequate evacuation plan. The worst example is an execrable piece from the Toronto Globe and Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos on American "individualism." But the truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos was caused by a system that was the exact opposite of individualism.

What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the government hasn't taken care of them. They don't use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.



But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them.

The welfare state--and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and encourages--is the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is reporting.

Source: TIA Daily -- September 2, 2005

[Flynn]

Sorry that was my Guest post by the way

[:FI:RULES]

Sorry for not being to clear in my previus post...

I am fully in suport for the helping of the victims...
What I was stating was the opinion of some people I have met and discussed the situation with...And I truly am sorry for not beeing clear in the matter...

But the fact is that Sweden and other countrys have offered to send rescue-personel to the area, and have been told not to bother...


It is by no means the populations fault that people in office make bad decissions, but unfortunaly it is the political realety that they have to pay for them.

With hopes of not messing it up more....

[:FI:IceFrog]

I wasn’t going to post on this subject because there is so many sides and aspects on it. I have heard a lot that officials didn’t move fast enough, which like I’ve said I heard many options on it. I just know that the officials got there before I did to help out. (Now that last statement was JUST for me to chew on, no one else.)
Now here in California (now I am nowhere near comparing the two situations) we went through some very tuff times with the rain and flooding, or should I say mudslides, and all the political quicksands that it has created, and all the finger pointing. My head is still spinning. (Did you know that “Flood Insurance” may cover your house but not your land, and what ever your land does as it slides down into your neighbor’s land and or house, you can be label for, and if any repair to your land is needed so it is not jeopardizing anything or anyone (which makes since), again you are label) sorry I’m getting off track

[:FI:Fenian]

I read in the paper here in Sweden that a Hercules transporter with water cleaning specialists and lots of equipment were on stand-by at Gothenburg airport for over a week, waiting for a green light from the Bush administration to go and help.

They called every day and got the same answer. We're not ready for your help.

At the same time the stranded citizens of NO were dying in some cases from drinking the poisoned water....

Similar stories of air offered and refused have been published....

Heads should roll after this mess is cleaned up.

[:FI:IceFrog]

Stories over here are swirling around also, true or not I don’t really know, but I do know in other emergencies that have evolved drinking water, every bottling company around has volunteered truck loads of water, so why why why, I don’t understand. Now I have been a Bush supporter, but even with that if he was the one that said “no water let them die of thirst” then I’ll say cut his *#@#$!!,,,, wait I can’t say that here.

[:FI:Snaphoo]

Sorry for not being to clear in my previus post...

I am fully in suport for the helping of the victims...
What I was stating was the opinion of some people I have met and discussed the situation with...And I truly am sorry for not beeing clear in the matter...

But the fact is that Sweden and other countrys have offered to send rescue-personel to the area, and have been told not to bother...


It is by no means the populations fault that people in office make bad decissions, but unfortunaly it is the political realety that they have to pay for them.

With hopes of not messing it up more....

No worries, I'm not angry at you. I just dislike the fact that there are people who will, for right or not, base their decision on whether or not to help, because of what the moron in office has done in the past. I was not aware of the rescue teams that had offered aid. That is troubling. We have been told that over 90 countries have donated to the relief cause, whatever that means.

The truth about this catastrophe will be told soon enough, and it will be very ugly.

[:FI:Falcon]

Great discusion lads,

Flynn, excellent post too.

If all goes well I will be going back to Laplace this weekend. I hope soon after that to have the time to participate in the forums to my infamous full measure.

VERY briefly ...

New Orleans is a cheap city. I don't mean tacky cheap, but just plain less expensive than other places. We have lots of minimally performing humans here cuz it's easy livin'

hense, "The Big Easy", one reason anyway.

Everyone shares some blame, but the local government must take the first glob o'guilt and then deal out what's left. If the refugee centers had some water and food waiting for them that Monday everything would have been better.

If the levee would have been built properly forty, thirty, twenty, ten years ago, impact of a near-miss hurricane would have been easier on the poor families who lived and died in their attics last week.

New Orleans is like Leningrad in '41. Three major roads in, surrounded by rivers lakes and swamps. It's hard to get equipment, food, water, etc. into the city under emergency situations. Even with the federal government standing by and ready to roll the government of N.O. KNEW it would take ~3 days for outside help to effectively reach the city.

Our evacuation plan was good ... for folks who had a car, but apparently no plan for those left behind.

Keel haul the N.O. city council, N.O. Levee Board and city planners: slap everyone else's wrists.


Fal "Arg!" con

PS: I am astonished about how nice and helpfull folks are after the storm. Those utilities, health offices and private repair services I have contacted would gladly twink my winky if I asked them. EVERYONE is collecting money, food, supplies or providing services, equipment and security, or homes, churches, meeting halls for shelter, or offering schooling, jobs, rent vouchers. Anything a dispaced family would need. My wife saw police and firemen from as far as Washington state and New York directing traffic and fighting fires.

It is inspiring to see folks coming together as they are.