There has been speculation that the relief efforts to New Orleans have been intentionally slow and limited in the interest of killing off the poorest people in the city. This talk is getting louder in public forums (see NOLA.com for examples). Some are saying that leeves were actually broken to further flooding in poor areas and that Federal efforts have been lax in an effort to allow the most vulnerable to perish.
I don’t want to believe in this type of conspiracy, but honestly, it is hard to not at least consider it in light of all that has happened. The outrage towards the Federal Government on down should be incredible: their hand in this disaster is clear.
For example:
— Where is our National Guard (the people who would normally provide the infrastructure and aid in this type of situation)? They are in Iraq. Priorities?
— Why not air drops of water and supplies to unflooded areas?
— Why were shelters not supplied with food and water?
— As one of the poorest cities in the country, 20% of the residents of New Orleans have no vehicle. However, the buses stopped running several days before the storm. People who relied on public transportation to obtain emergency supplies or to leave town were stuck unprotected.
— A significant portion of the emergency (FEMA) budget was moved into Homeland Security to support the President’s “war” in Iraq. (See more about this here.)
— Military forces were prepared to enter New Orleans as long as two days ago to help handle the violence, yet could not because they had not (and to our knowledge, still have not) been given a Presidential direction to do so.
The reality feels as if New Orleans, irregularless of its status as a vitual U.S. port, the high percentages of vulnerable Americans who live within, and high risk of disaster… despite all of this, there was little to no solid budget, plan, or action for this type of event.
stardust | 01-Sep-05 at 11:58 am | Permalink
I know what you mean about the ill preparedness of disaster and relief efforts despite the advanced warning there was. We have had countless discussions about this very issue over the past few days in my office.
I was listening to MPR yesterday morning and I heard leeve engineers saying they were only built to with stand a level 3 Hurricane – OK! well you knew this was coming at New Orleans as a level 5 days in advance why wasn’t extra support such as sand bags or other material – now being used to try and fix the leeves – put there in advance?
And watching about the devistation on tv only makes me more mad and sad – I swear you would think we were a third world country the way this is being handled – it’s ridiculous.
I often wonder if the delay and/or no response to some areas is a poverty or race issue or both. I can’t help but feel one or both are at play here as you have been hearing expressed by others. Despite aligations I have heard nothing back in response – it will be interesting to see how this unfolds in the coming days, weeks, months.
– Deneil
eli | 01-Sep-05 at 12:43 pm | Permalink
I’m not sure how you will be able to share this information, however it is important.
Freddie Mac has given their loan servicing officers (your mortgage lender/broker) the go ahead to hold off on collecting mortgage payments from it’s customers in the areas hit by Katrina. You will need to contact your mortgage lender/broker and let them know about your situation but it is one type of relief that might help several people in the wake of this disaster. The link tells you more about it.
http://www.freddiemac.com/news/archives/corporate/2005/20050830_hurricanekatrina.html
There are many people in my office as well as friends who feel that just donating cash isn’t the answer. We want to help in some way. Any suggestions to get connected to people who could use a delivery of clothing, canned/boxed food, water purification tablets etc?
Paul | 01-Sep-05 at 6:45 pm | Permalink
Holliest: first, potentially some lighthearted good news? I just did a google news search for “Bender Shipbuilding” and the most recent hit was from August 31, for what it’s worth. That’s nearly two days old!
I can’t possibly fathom the difficulty in NOLA right now. But, over the past several years, I’ve really begun to believe that there’s a small number of people around that really really suck. Supposing it’s only 1% of the population, that’s still a lot of mean people who suck. I tell myself that I shouldn’t attribute to malice things that are better explained by stupidity. Seeing people take (loot, steal, pilfer, plunder, remove, liberate, whatever) food, water and medicine: great, they need it and it certainly would have gone bad anyways. Liberating TVs from the local electronics wharehouse: not exactly surprising, questionable really given the lack of electricity, definitely not a good thing, but have a hard time blaming them. Shooting at the National Guard helicopter while it was trying to evacuate people from the Super Dome or sniping the hospital when they were trying to evacuate patients: that’s exactly the 1% that I mean (at least the helicopters have quit trying to land and instead they’re just throwing the food and water out from about 10 feet up; hopefully that will help some). And they make it horrible for everyone. Anger and emotions run high but in the end we all have free will and no one is lacking the means to not shoot at rescuers.
Unfortunately the levee should have been shored up decades ago. It really should have been built stronger in the first place. We make the same mistakes over and over again. New Orleans was horribly vulnerable like Galveston was in 1900. Sometimes we’re our own worst enemies: the levee should have been shored up decades ago but it’s easy to ignore such things while the incidence of major hurricanes has been declining over 50 years. Maybe it was easier still given other challenges in New Orleans – I’ve read with interest about Mayor Nagin’s crack down on corruption in the city’s municipal services.
I spent six months working in Logistics Readiness at FEMA and learned many things about the Constitutional prohibition on using Federal troops for law enforcement, how hard it is to mobilize the National Guard (it’s important to remember that many of the Guardsmen live in hurricane-affected areas themselves), why you can’t have too many disaster assets in the hurricane area before the hurricane (they’d get destroyed) but how frustrating it is for responders when they’re trying to move assets in after roads are damaged and flooded, local airports aren’t functioning, and, in this case, they can’t get anything up the canals because too much crap is in the way. It’s frustrating on all sides because the victims, in this case many of whom had no choice but to stay, feel like time is passing agonizingly slowly with every hour seeming like days while an hour can feel like a minute or so for disaster response people. Then there’s the common problem, Mayor Nagin summed it up extremely well: “Too many cooks in the kitchen.”
It’s really really bad. Whoever really believes that it could possibly get as bad as it has? Maybe someone who designed a double-decker highway that was supposed to withstand an earthquake that rated an 8 on the Richter scale but who sees it destroyed when an earthquake rumbling on at a level 5 actually hits San Francisco? Maybe that person gets it. But unfortunately that’s not most of us.
There’s really nothing that makes this better in the end. After a year or two people still living in New Orleans will hopefully be able to say that it’s “not as bad” or something, but once it’s gone this far things will never be the same. But try to keep your chin up. I’d also heard about the troops outside the city that couldn’t go in but immediately questioned it because Federal troops can’t even assemble for an operational mission outside their base without being ordered to do so and National Guard troops are under the operational control of the state’s Governor when responding to domestic emergencies. No doubt that National Guard is stretched with about a third of Louisianna’s force in Iraq, but there should be nearly 30,000 troops in the Gulf Coast region by this weekend, which is lightning speed for any military operation. Believe me, I know first hand from my own light infantry days. All along Rumsfeld has said there were enough National Guard troops to go around. Now we’ll see if he was being honest or not. My guess is not. There’s a good way to remedy that situation in 2008, at least, and maybe partially so much sooner than that (midterms). But despite my doubts I’ll hope for the best and am heartened that the 30,000 troops will be the largest military response to a natural disaster in the United States ever leading me to believe that people do take this seriously. Supposedly Congress is in session tonight and tomorrow and hopefully the $10.5 billion they’re promising will be forthcoming quickly.
You know you’re always welcome in our place as well. We have an extra room with a comfy bed but alas no broadband (hence the fact that I didn’t just email you from home in the first place as I haven’t cleaned the spam out of jennandpaul@earthlink.net in ages and now understand that it’s rejecting new messages; I still refuse to get cable and there’s no possibility of DSL in our fiber neighborhood… but I assure you that I’m not complaining. Especially not now), so please forgive the long “comment” (commentary?) and keep your chin up. Hopefully you’ll somehow be able to connect with some of your NOLA friends soon. I’ve heard that people have had some success getting a hold of people through Craigslist… any tries?