Hurricane Katrina

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I'm running to the bank and then off to shoot (pick-ups); I'll double-check this thread later this evening. As far as 'What would I do?' that's a little vague. Be a little more specific and I'll be glad to play roleplaying games with you

If you even watched that video and are complacent that "...the government is doing a good job." says it all. Why would I debate with that rational?

No one is doing a good job. The Mayor, The Governor, the Federal Goverment...
 
franck said:
iamloser: The hurricane hit at the end of the month. That's usually a pretty bad time money wise. Knowing that most people that stayed back live below poverty level. Hell even myself, like right now eat on a dollar a day. If you got no money to leave town, you probably have no money to stack up on supplies either.
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..i know.. its hard to really try and fathom what anyone was thinking beforehand, but i do have to sit and think.. how much does it cost to fill up some bottles or jugs or something with water? .. how much is some canned food? seriously.. you could eat for a quite a while off 10.00 of canned food. i dont know.. i know they arent overflowing with money, but there seems to be nobody that is prepared.. perhaps the prepared ones are smart enough to stay away from the thriving zombie hords of people though.. i know i would.. rough situation.. people dying. last place id be is in the middle of all that confusion with my bags -o - food sucking down a juicy juice. anyway i dont mean to be judgmental.. it just seems really odd that so many people seemed to do absolutely nothing.. not even so much as packing a backpack with some essential items. ..i dont know. im just amazed at it all i guess.
 
The argument that "They were told to leave and didn't" really pisses me off. Franck is right, a lot of the people just did not have the resources to leave. Look at the demographics for New Orleans:

"27.9% of the population and 23.7% of families are below the poverty line. Out of the total population, 40.3% of those under the age of 18 and 19.3% of those 65 and older are living below the poverty line."

27.9% percent of the population lives below the poverty line, with a population of 484,674 (2000 census) that is over 135,000 people living below the poverty line. ONE HUNDRED THIRTY-FIVE THOUSAND!!

This number is not secret. Everyone knows the level of poverty in New Orleans. Why was there no effort to facilliate the evacuation of those without resources? Why weren't there lines of buses taking people out as Katrina built strength in the Gulf? I know it happened fast, but WTF. This situation has been on the doomsday map for a long time. The lack of preparadness is shamefull. This year will mark the fourth anniversary of 9/11 and we have spent billions of dollars on preparadness. Well, it is obvious that the bureaucrats ****ed up again. As much as I dislike Mr. Bush and his policies and am sure that history will rank him as one of the worst Presidents we have ever had, I do not think that he is solely responsible for the situation. It is time to look at all of those that call themselves "Public Servants" and have them answer for this. We, as citizens must learn from this and demand much more from our leaders.

Also, I just wanted to say to Houston Texas, you are a class act!!!
 
I work in the city of Detroit and it's a similar situation there regarding the poverty level. Michigan is pretty safe as far as natural disasters go--winter storms probably being the worst possibility. But even if hurricanes were likely here, I know that many people in the city just wouldn't have the resources to pack up and leave. I see you're in Virginia by way of Detroit, David, so you know the situation. I'm sure many of those people in New Orleans felt they couldn't afford to leave or fill the cupboards with supplies.
 
Man, I'm starting to see all the images and its just sad. My heart and prayers goes out to all the victims. It's just unreal that most of the city is underwater.
 
Josh_Boelter said:
I work in the city of Detroit and it's a similar situation there regarding the poverty level. Michigan is pretty safe as far as natural disasters go--winter storms probably being the worst possibility. But even if hurricanes were likely here, I know that many people in the city just wouldn't have the resources to pack up and leave. I see you're in Virginia by way of Detroit, David, so you know the situation. I'm sure many of those people in New Orleans felt they couldn't afford to leave or fill the cupboards with supplies.
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Yeah, I know the situation, I worked in EMS in the Detroit Metro area from 1987 'til 2002. I went through the Piston's riots in 1990 and the tornados in July 1997. I can not image the stress that NOLA emergency services are going thru.

Urban society is a vastly dependant society. Every time I think about New Orleans, I must hold back the tears.
 
Zim said:
Bush call in the Navy Seals!!
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Thats right, a friend of mine, which is from Louisiana by the way, was a hardcore navy seal, from Somalia, Iraq to Colombia he's been everywhere, they even dropped in flying thru the eye of a hurricane back in the 90s to land there before the hurricane hit and start organizing things before the destruction started. He's absolutely flabber gasted that nothing has been done in the wake of this disaster. National guards troops should have been there. Hell he was a navy seal and he was sent into a disaster zone before disaster even hit.
 
When you see a storm coming you don't park troop in the path of the storm. You get people out of the way not in the way.

Maybe they would drop a seal into the eye of a storm, but you don't park a bunch of guys in trucks and humvees in front of a Cat 4 storm. You send them in after the storm. Besides these storms do move around and don't always go where you think they will. So it's best to wait till after the storm.
 
The thing that confounds me is, I thought that our armed forces had established a rapid deployment force that could respond to national security emergencies at a moments notice. From what I understand, I thought that we could deploy a Brigade sized force, mostly from the 82nd Airborne Division, anywhere in the world in 36 hours.

Where were they?

The only thing I have to say to the Department of Homeland Security is, "Get the **** away from the Beltway and establish real "Homeland Security".

I do not want to be an element of division. I do not care what your political point of view is, Conservative, Liberal or Liberterian. We have to get together, outside of partisian politics and establish a plan for the protection of the American people, all the American people.

"All mighty God, Lord of all, please look down on those suffering souls victimized by this devestating storm. Up lift their spirits and comfort their souls. In Jesus' name I pray."
 
isnt there different rules when to send in national guard and regular army?

or have they changed that?
 
As the originator of this post I'd like to ask that we all stop bitching about how slow the help has been, how lame this or that political party is, and the general complaining about the situation in general. If you look back at all my responses in this post you'll see that I've not once complained about the efforts because I probably more than anyone that's posted in this post know more about what's going on there now.

When I was 4 years old and Camille came through, my parents left town and we lost our home.

In 92 when Andrew came through after leveling southern Florida, people still stayed without planning. My parents left. I stayed and was working at the time shooting video for the New Orleans police dept.

In 98 when Georges came through once again my parents left town and I stayed working for the local Fox affiliate. Both times in my adult life we were lucky, if you call 24" of water in your home lucky....

05 - Katrina - My parents left once again and now do not have a home to return to.

I see people complaining here about the fact that since the people are poor they were ignored. Well I'm calling BULLSHIT on this. I can tell you from growing up in an upper-middle class white New Orleans home that there are two types of people that live in N.O. and I'm not talking about black or white, rich or poor. I'm talking about the attitude of people when hurricanes enter the gulf. There's the people like my parents that pack up and leave every time and don't take a chance, and there's the people that would not have left even if you put a gun to thier heads. Even if the government had brought in 500 buses on Saturday and asked everyone to get on board and leave for safety, there's a HUGE amount of people that would have ignored the call.
Yesterday the Govorner of Mississippi put it pretty bluntly on CNN. He said he went on the air Friday and asked everyone to leave. He went on the air Saturday and ordered people to leave. Then he went on the air again on Sunday and begged people to leave. And yet people stayed behind. Now these same people are complaining for the help coming so slow.

The president today has acknowledged that the help has been too slow in coming and that every agency is working as fast as possible now. Obviously it has been a terrible situation. As bad as it is in New Orleans you have to realize too that the help is not concentrated just there. The entire gulf coast from N.O. to Mobile is in ruins with people needing assistance. Has it been too slow coming... ABSOLUTELY.

Probably the most important thing that people need to realize also is that what they've been watching is THE NEWS. Anyone that watches local and national news on a regular basis knows that they make an extreme effort to report the bad and ignore the good. If you've ever worked for a TV news department you know the saying "If it bleeds, it leads" referring of course to the fact that the worse the story is the higher up in the newscast it will be. Remember that the news organizations ALWAYS magnify and harp on the bad and end the newscast with the fluffy good news story. One of the reasons I'm not in the business anymore. I got sick of it.

So I'll get off the soapbox now and ask again if you can or haven't - give to the Redcross or Salvation Army. Blood is just as important as money.
 
I'm seeing so many rants and whines about how the government should have done this, should have planned this, yada yada. That's not the FEDERAL government's job. That's why state governments exist. Natural events and weather is a local jurisdiction. The local administration/mayor was failing in HIS job, not the feds. The entire New Orleans school district bus fleet is under water now.. why didn't he call them in to get people out??? And I understand there are a few people who literally can't get out in time.. .but to the rest of them who chose to stay, how stupid can you be? They were warned. Bigtime. Over & Over. The bars were even packed the night before it hit.

Idiocy.

And now as typical America goes, it turns into a spin session with everyone blaming Bush, etc etc. The man's not God. He can't do everything. If he was that powerful he would've said the magic word and turned the hurricane towards Mexico.

Then there's the race card. Victimism and woe is me i'm so oppressed yada yada. Tell me if it's a white man against blacks issue, why are 90% of the people in the superdome black, and 90% of the people volunteering and going down there to help white? Kanye West showed his ignorance with his comments on the concert tonight, furthering my point.

Bottom line, Americans need to stop yapping and complaining and start helping. If you don't think the people who are helping are doing enough or a good job, get off your a$$ and go help yourself.

Sorry for my own rant, I'm just sick and tired of everything that ever happens being turned into some huge anti-american, anti-bush, anti-government, white vs black BULL.

Actually, no, i'm not sorry for it. That's how I see it.

:)
 
What everyone should understand are a few things. One is that even if the money had not been cut from the budget to rebuild the levees, it was estimated by the Army Corps of Engineers that it was going to take 30 years to complete and that was an estimate from 1999.

No. 2 is that Bush declared Louisianna a disaster zone two days before the hurricane hit. That allowed the Governor and the Mayor to request aid in advance. That didn't happen. National Guard troops were stationed 135 miles away from New Orleans, but were waiting on the call to come in. There was no call, because there was no communication with the police who were in the city. SAT phones were not supplied to the police by the Mayor's office or the Governor's office. (Col. David Hunt on "the factor with bill o'reilly).
There were supplies available but no one to tell anyone where they had to go or how to get there.
There was a huge problem between local, state and federal govnernments on this tragedy. It started at the bottom and went to the top. Unfortunately, the people paid the price. They had 3 full days to understand the enormous problem on their doorstep. If the mayor or the governor had any intelligence at all, they would have sent buses in and evacuated these people in the first place.

Fortuately for New York, there was a strong leader in Giuliani, Louisianna has no leader, nor does New Orleans. The mayor is staying in Baton Rouge (probably in a suite). There has been no leadership in New Orleans, nor Louisianna, nor at the federal level. But the so called leaders in Louisanna want to blame the feds.
 
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