I just spent three hours watching cable news. Flipping back and forth between CNN and FOX, I was awed by the destruction in LA and MS. Thousands are being transported to the Houston Astrodome. People walking out of the waters with nothing. Emerging from the dark waters and wandering behind news reporters with nowhere to go. The looting. The reports of dead bodies. Maybe 1 million without homes. I heard 26 billion yesterday, but today nobody is even putting a number on the cost of this damage.
The delay in getting relief was the biggest story tonight. Where is the cavalry? Three days later and people have no water. There are maybe 100,000 still trapped in attics and porches. There are looters walking down the French Quarter with AK47s and shopping carts of Nikes. Where is the National Guard? The delay in getting relief down there is unforgivable. Husband told me that Kos says that there is a racial element to all of this, but hubby thought that was ridiculous.
Why didn’t people evacuate? Sure, many people are ornery and stupid. But many of those who stayed were poor. So poor that they had no cars or no gas. They had no relatives to visit out of state. Or they were too old to move.
Note to disaster experts — If you are going to institute a mandatory evacuation, then you have to provide transportation and lodging for your residents elsewhere.
As I hogged most of the sofa, Steve sat at the other end watching TV with me. His biggest gripe was the public officials — the mayor, the governor, legislators — did not appear to be in the thick of it. Not like Rudy walking down Wall Street with ash on his shoulders. And the President’s plane just flew over the mess and left without anyone getting their feet wet. Oh, that looks bad.
And why did the major network stations continue to air their regular shows? Why was the dancing reality show still on?
They are estimating that it’s going to take months to put the South back together. Maybe years. What is the long term affect of this going to be on the war and the Bush presidency? The war which is going so badly lately. 950 women and children died today in Baghdad as a bridge collapsed. Life is cheap today.
UPDATe: Read this. Even conservatives are questioning Bush’s less than hasty response.
UPDATE2: Kieran Healy brings us the race card and compares David Brooks and Jonah Goldberg.
Apt. 11d 
I don’t think Mayor Nagin has left the city.
It’s so disturbing that rescue had to be stopped to deal with law enforcement.
I’m so upset by the fact that the worst parts of the initial flooding, the storm surge and the first levee break, were in the poorest parts of town. The 9th Ward is literally sectioned off from the city, bordered by fences, canals, and train tracks. It’s their homes (if you can call projects homes) that are now submerged. In Uptown where the old money lives, they may have around 3 feet of water now.
It’s not exaggeration to say that New Orleans is the one place in this country that hints of developing world. We joked about it when we lived there (just moved away this summer!), but it’s also a sobering reality.
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My dad is a disaster management expert. Half his team is in New Orleans now and the other half is on their way.
It’s very easy to complain about the response to this, and other natural disasters lately. But one thing we need to remember is that much of the “disaster” money has been moved over towards “terrorism” money in the last 3 years. The National Guard is also otherwise occupied.
The disaster management experts have been predicting this very scenario for many years. They have tried to get federal funding for studies/plans/etc. for the “New Orleans Cat 5 Hurricane Scenario.” I can’t tell you how many times I heard my father drone on about this possibility. (His other favorite is the “San Francsico earthquake” )
And I suspect that most of the disaster management experts or Red Cross employees/volunteers or Coast Guard members have slept only a few hours since Sunday. They aren’t stupid – they know that they need shelter and transportation. But they are working without sufficient money and manpower for this level of catastrophe. And the sheer exhaustion of dealing with it – it’s not something most of us can understand. Even the best laid plans crumble when you haven’t slept for 4-5 days.
It’s such a tragic situation. So sad. It is so strange to be here in Wisconsin with perfect weather and see that complete level of destruction. so close, but so far away.
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Jeanette — re: the poor of New Orleans. Yes, that’s something we were talking about as well. The poor of the North are so much better off than the poor in the South. Before the storm, they were only just holding on, now… Well, it’s bad. As part of the reconstruction efforts of the South, there should be a component that looks at long term changes for those communities. Better housing. Schools. Public transportation. If New Orleans is really a tabula rasa now, let’s put things together better than before.
Kristen — No one is blaming the individual relief workers. Each one is a hero. No, people are blaming the lack of resources that they have to do the right thing.
And like you, we’ve been asking, has the war weakened our ability to take care of ourselves? Major major question.
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It’s hard to know where they have to begin now. It seems to me that the water and fuel and food and transportation needed to be lined up before the disaster, of course they didn’t know how bad it would be, but now with the guns and lawlessness, people are going nuts. My husband mentioned the race card as well. Could be the media, or just that these are the people who live there. The fact of the matter is that these are people, just like us, with families and homes and lives, whose entire existence has been torn apart. People are giving birth out in the streets, and dealing with small children and the elderly. One woman pointed out the body of a man who had jumped to his death off of a bridge.
And people are out there and helping, but it seems just like a drop in the bucket. So overwhelming. I guess our emergency preparedness has to be looked at. It’s so frustrating to watch it all on tv, how much can one family give? I know they’re out there and help is on the way but it seems so slow.
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Laura, one of my students just this morning got called up for active duty with the National Guard to go down to help with Hurricane relief efforts. You’re right that it’s taken too long to get them down there, but this kid has only been back a month or two from being overseas for 9 months. I’m wondering about how our current National Guard deployments are going to affect the relief efforts.
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I was glad to see someone else who seems as concerned as I have been about the ongoing news coverage. And where is the National Guard? Why aren’t the buses *bringing* food to the SuperDome instead of wasting gas driving there empty? People can throw a ton of money at this thing, but it’s not going to solve the real big problem that we have now: our country is disorganized and has no capable leadership.
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Some hotels cleaning up
The Economy Inn and the former Budget Inn II were both sued by the city of Fayetteville, which said they were havens for prostitution and drug abuse. The two hotels are now under new management. Both are undergoing substantial renovation. Nick Dhana an…
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