Hurricane Katrina Apathy?

[daylily]

If anyone's interested:  I can't find much from legitimate news outlets about the reported violence in the Superdome and convention center.  We will, of course, never know exactly what happened.

I did find this, which is from the Reuters AlertNews service.

"We found a young girl raped and killed in the bathroom," one National Guard soldier told Reuters. "Then the crowd got the man and they beat him to death."

I'm not sure which is worse.

[amethyst]

If the man had not raped and murdered the young girl, the crowd would not have beaten him to death. At the time this happened, there was no law enforcement in the dome. The citizens took the law into their hands, probably for several reasons: to stop him from committing more rapes and murders, to avenge the girl's murder and rape, and to have him serve as an object lesson for those that might be considering raping and killing other women and girls. Apparently it was effective, for the most part. The crowd did not then go on to more random beating deaths. I just hope they got the right guy and that it was not a case of mistaken identity.

Perhaps they could have put the man into citizen's arrest and waited for the authorities to show up. However, I think that by the time this happened, even the most optimistic people there had ceased to believe that the authorities were going to show up any time soon. Secondly, babysitting a violent rapist/murderer for an unknown period of time and fighting off the other angry citizens would require more energy than probably anyone had. Hunger and dehydration tend to make people weak very quickly. Third, who would want to lose their own life defending someone who was a murderer?

The third possibility would be to completely ignore it and let the rapist/murderer continue to do his thing. Not an option.

While the solution to the problem was not ideal, and the whole story is very sad, I think that under the circumstances, their options were limited. When I read that story, I thought about what I would have done. I'd like to think that I'd at least have attempted the citizen's arrest. However, if I were overwhelmed by an angry bunch of folks wanting option 1, I would not put my life on the line for someone who had already murdered and raped a person.  

[bliz]

WHere were this poor child's parents? 

[onlyrenting]

amethyst :

OR, I hope and pray that your brother in law and family are safe.

Thank you for your prayers, we have word my BIL is fine. They stayed in their home, the neighborhood is fine.
No water, we don't know much more. My SIL works for the hospital and that hospital is still there. She left to help her parents in Baton Rouge and my BIL is watching the home.

Motia
OR, that must be very scary for you, your husband, and his family. Any news? Did he make it out safely? Please keep us posted.

My BIL here in Dallas also works in the hospitals and helps run the local drug rehab. He said there are people form NOL needing the meds they offer. He said a woman was upset and lost in the area. She had her dogs in a hotel and didn't know how to get back to them. My BIL had her follow him to show her how to get back to the hotel.
Another story told to my BIL a woman and her daugher 20yrs old  had been rescued from their roof top. Mother had at one time been in prision, they removed them from the roof top and wanted to send them to a shelter, the mom left walking refused help when she learned the shelter was a local jail. The daugher has not seen her since.

I find myself locking the doors where before I would not have worried. It appears there may be the criminal element and mental patients left to run the streets. If the shelter was a jail at one time where did the prisoners go? I think the prison was abandond from a long time ago but I could be wrong.

There was a woman on tv whos mother was dying, she was crying because they told her she would have to place her mother's body when she died on the stack of boidies behind the statium. She had been over 3 days without medicine and already looked dead. Bodies are floating every where along with the snakes.

My neice and daughter both have kids being transfered to their schools. My neice goes to a priviate school for the wealthy, she said grants are being given for the kids to go to school there.

My BIL and SIL staying in NOL have the hospital that will keep them busy. The repair trucks are working on the
power to the area.  The levy near them did not break, the news is saying those levies needed work along time ago but the funds were not there to repair them.

This is going to be a slow painful process to get life back in order for all. I think so many things will come out about why the help took so long. A truck driver on the news said his boss held him back 24hrs from driving in to the area. That he was just sitting waiting until he had orders to move. He was in a big semi truck and did not look like national guard.

Will keep in touch ................OR

[amethyst]

WHere were this poor child's parents? 

Bliz, They may have been separated during the flood...or dead... So many do not know where their families are.

For awhile, when they first started evacuating the dome, the National Guard put men in one line and women and kids in the other. They were separating mothers and sons, husbands and wives, dads and daughters. Horrible. Apparently, there was a lot of rebellion, people saying they weren't going without eachother, so they stopped doing it.

[miss piggy]

Hey everyone,

This thread is getting longer very quickly and I only read the last two pages to catch up and gather that emotions are running high.  I am very concerned for the victims etc.  Words fail.

However, I was really heartened to be able to watch today's press conference with the Head of Homeland Security who was being grilled by lots of press people.  A couple of reporters wanted FEMA's Michael Brown's head on a platter and the HSS guy defended him pretty well and gave sound reasons for why things happened the way they did.

1. Mother Nature is a powerful opponent--Not one but TWO MAJOR castastrophes happened simultaneously in New Orleans.  This could not have been predicted.  

2. Our country's constitution prevents feds from coming in until called, there is a whole chain of command, legal stuff that prevents them from just pouncing on any city in the US.  If you know your US History, you know that the same folks who are calling for fed heads are the same ones who would tell them to buzz off if a riot had broken out.  Check the Civil Rights chapter in your textbook.  This is why it is so amazing that US can send troops anywhere in the world and our help is accepted (after a call is made) and why ironically, they can't send them instantly within domestic US.  

3. Blaming people & organizations & hindsight analysis will go on forever, but right now they are all focused on moving ahead, looking ahead.  There is a huge job in front of all of us.

I'm not really doing this press conference justice, but it was very good to listen to the exchange.  Still, I do wonder about how poor people were suppose to evacuate or if they even knew...

For those of you outside the US, the culture in the South moves much slower than elsewhere in the country.  Through a loosely connected grapevine of friends, I learned that on Saturday a (not poor) Southerner said, ok we'll evacuate but we have time, we'll leave tomorrow a.m., and non-Southern hubby replied we're getting the H*ll out of here NOW.  It made the difference.  The storm picked up speed and power on Saturday and many people had not moved fast enough.  Really, this isn't to blame victims who didn't get out.  No one knew what they were up against when Mother Nature sent us this one.  

This is my understanding from where I sit way far away.

PBS had a great panel about the political fallout and for sure poverty is going to be discussed quite a bit in the upcoming elections.  In psychological terms, I think the storm exposed the US skeletons in the closet, our shadow.  The homelessness and poverty has always been ignored.  Ruthless Bobby Kennedy didn't become "St. Bobby" until he lost a brother through murder and he visited the South.  He had never seen such squalor and truly didn't know people were living like that.  It truly affected him.  It was only then that he knew what loss was.  (And poverty isn't limited to the South, just to CYA here.)

I truly believe homeless people are angels and try to give whenever I can.  I tell my children that they are not to talk to them (to protect themselves from the violent ones) but to pray for them and teach them not to react negatively to them or make fun of them.  I haven't shared this with anyone (because it is rather new agey) but I wonder if poor people aren't spirits who have earned the harder journey to teach the rest of us the harder lessons.  I don't know if that make sense.  Apologies if I sound preachy.

With no communication system in place early on, I'm sure there will be many misunderstandings, many misperceptions about what was going on where and why.  I'm going to hold my fire and try to focus my energy on charity.  I just can't believe this.  I'm praying for the Gulf Coast people in every way I can.

MP

PS There is a movie scene (sorry if this seems flip or inappropriate but the message is in there) in Apollo 13 where two of the three astronauts are going at each other with insinuations of blame and defensiveness, and Tom Hanks says words like  "Hey!  We're not doing this!  We're not going to think about how we got here, we're going to think about how we're going to get home."  I guess that's where I am at for right now.  Plenty of time for blame later.

[Plucky]

I'm with Vunil.  I heard some survivors saying that they were told to evacuate, but they had no transportation.  They also said that once they were away from home, how would they survive?  They had not heard about any convention center.  This family had $80 in cash and said they did not think they would be able to survive for long away from home.  Should the able-bodied members of the family walk off and leave the others?

These people are living in a different world from most of us and we do not have a frame of reference, nor are we comfortable with them.   For example, if you saw some obviously very poor people wandering around in your neighborhood, would you a) invite them in b) call the police c) confront them d) do nothing ?

But if we are able to blame the victims to some extent, it keeps us from having to look at anything or anywhere else to make some changes.  With this level of denial we'll have a next disaster somewhere which would be equally preventable.   But it's not us, or people who look like us, so it's ok.  THEY need to make the changes, THEY need to evacuate, do what they're told, avoid causing a problem.  Right?   See you next disaster, because nothing will have changed.
a disgusted
Plucky

[Stormchild]

Mother Nature is a powerful opponent--Not one but TWO MAJOR castastrophes happened simultaneously in New Orleans.  This could not have been predicted.

I've removed the poster's name from this quote because my post addresses the Talking Fed who said it, not the person who posted it. The Fed is supposed to know better. We are supposed to be able to believe these people when they tell us such things.

Unfortunately, this federally employed gentleman is talking through his hat. Actually, it could have been predicted, and in fact it was. In 2001. The article, which came out in Scientific American, is titled "Drowning New Orleans". The author is Mark Fischetti. I don't have a URL for it, only a scan, and that is too large to post here. I suspect it can be easily Googled, though. Climatologists have been predicting this and modeling it and trying to get people to pay attention to it for quite a while.
 
Interestingly, FEMA's funds were cut, as were funds for the maintenance of the levees and programs for wetlands preservation, after this was published; and a high level manager - I believe it was in the Army Corps of Engineers - was forced out of his job for objecting to those very funding cuts. This was between 2001 and the present, with the most recent and savage cuts coming during this year.

Richard Feynman put it extremely well. "...reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." That is from his report on the Challenger explosion.... which happened on January 25, 1986. Looks like she still can't be, nineteen years later.

[Stormchild]

If we want to point fingers, why not at the dumshits who built the city below sea level back in the 1700's.

Again, I'm addressing the idea here, not the poster.

Remember the dumshits who built the Netherlands below sea level in the 1400's? Last I heard, the country was still there, 600 years later. They are aggressively maintaining and protecting their dike system... after a brush with this type of disaster themselves, several years ago. Unusually heavy rains, river flooding, and a dike breach.

So I have a slightly different recommendation: that we try learning something from people who have made this kind of thing work for, say, six centuries. Of course, since we aren't willing to listen to our own scientists, how likely is it that we'd be willing to learn anything from some other country's?

[vunil]

Don't know if anyone watched Meet the Press this a.m., but they had the Scientific American guy Stormy mentions, and a couple of other folks on there who have been working diligently for years to get the water systems fixed in NO.  Other cities, like New York, are just as vulnerable (sitting in the middle of water) to all kinds of problems but maintain things better and haven't had the issue.  He even said he knew how much it would take to fix the problem and it is the same as about 2 days in Iraq.  (oh, now I think he may have said two weeks-- I have no sense of these kinds of huge numbers).  Anyway, his model of what might happen is exactly what did happen, and it sounded as if all of the scientists thinking about this agreed.

It feels better to think it was unpreventable, but alas I am not sure that's true.

The show was really heartbreaking this a.m.-- this big burly guy crying because a friend of his lost his grandmother Friday night to drowning.  She was in a nursing home, stuck there.  Every day he called and told her people were coming for her.  She was terrified.  But no one came and she drowned.  Friday night!

It is really so horrific.  But it is also heartening how much ordinary citizens are trying to do.  My community has really mobilized to try to help-- we are taking in a lot of refugees starting last night.  People do seem to get the impact of this and want to help.

[Portia]

I think it’s okay to express strong emotions and sometimes absolutely necessary. This is a shocking time and we’re probably going through the generally accepted reactions: (how does it go?) –
shock, anger, denial, acceptance, sadness -? can’t remember exactly.

But right now can I just say: THANK GOODNESS. The airlift is happening and thank goodness someone moved their ass and made it happen. Someone had clear thinking and said “just do it” and I’m relieved. This is the start of the recovery and it’s going to be hell for a long time (practicalities, politics, recriminations etc etc) but most all: what should have been done is being done and I’m glad that for most, the worst part of the nightmare (I truly hope) will be over.

Vunil: Sorry.  I am feeling pretty angry now
Stating what you believe in is important imo when you’ve been raised to do the opposite. Having a clear, helpful voice is the objective? Joining emotion with thinking is hard work for me.

Daylily: Why is the United States government more responsible for that terrible crime than the rapist? 
I’d say those who rape are responsible for their actions. The Govt is responsible for allowing the situation to get to the point where civilisation starts to break down. They should have acted sooner. Under extreme conditions, many people become capable of actions that they would otherwise not take. I would kill my neighbours if they threatened my children’s lives (if I had any); ordinarily I would not think of killing of my neighbours. In the situation in the Dome, some people, most likely abused adults, will have become clinically insane because of their environment. Those abused as kids will have abused others, acting out their incredible fear in the only way they know. That does not excuse their actions. An explanation is not an excuse. The Govt is responsible for keeping civilised society going: civilised society broke down.

Kaz: I know what you mean Portia, it's a frightening scenario.
Yes, and not because it’s in the US necessarily, but because it could happen anywhere. Because we outside the US tend to superficially believe (all) the US is rich, if it can happen there….we are more afraid for ourselves. Maybe we are more afraid of what we, as social animals, could become, given the same circumstances? I know I’d have gone partially nuts.

Bliz: The Marta thing is there was a post from Marta right after an earlier post today.  When I went back it was gone.  Can anyone explain that?  I am not as familiar with this board as some of you and I presume somebody deleted it...very weird.
Bliz, you can delete any of your own posts after the event. Just log in and look for the ‘delete’ button at the top-right of the post. Sorry I misinterpreted the Marta post thing.

OR: thank you especially for your posts and my thoughts sent to you.

Anyone who can take (and wants to take) gory stuff, here’s a BBC link. Are people going to get the kind of deep trauma counselling they’ll need? I wish I was qualified. All this has to be talked about, a lot. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4213214.stm

[miss piggy]

Hello all,

I have to say I am learning a lot from this thread and all opinions expressed.  I have lots of questions and wish I had answers. 

They are not angels, they are people. Just like you and me.
There but for the grace of God go I..... That's what you should be teaching your children.

Kaz, I think you and I have a mutual goal of minimizing the stigmatization of the homeless.  I use your message as well with my kids and do not tell them my angels concept.  It is something I carry in my heart to remember the grace of God.  But thanks for the, er, coaching..........?     Can you give me a little credit for not calling them worthless lazy deadbeats who deserve what they get?  In any event, I'll save my further thoughts on this for a future discussion.

Stormchild, thank you for your diplomacy.  Much appreciated.  As i hear more information like what you posted about NO and Netherlands, etc., I realize how far I have to go to comprehending this whole thing.  I guess what I am trying to say is I've got to withhold judgment until I learn more facts.  I confess my ignorance here, but that is not for lack of interest or concern. 

I'm going to refrain from posting further on this thread but please know I'm not ignoring it, I just want to read it and learn more from it.  Thanks.  MP

[Plucky]

I heard that the jails had been opened and the prisoners let out.  The jails are underwater, so no new prisoners can be locked up.  I think it is criminal to lump in the mostly innocent people trying to survive with a few who take the opportunity to steal, rape and kill.  It is another instance of the small minority being used to tar the majority with a convenient label which relieves us of responsibility.

Instead of the people being protected from the criminals, they are being lumped in with the criminals and subjected to the 'shoot to kill' rule. 

This is an opportunity to learn something and change things.  Or, it is another occasion to find an easy, self-serving explanation and retreat back into iour confortable lives, where things will not require us to change our attitudes and actions, and our privilege remains intact.
A not through yet
Plucky

[amethyst]

I am happy to see that our journalists are doing their job instead of spin. If MSM starts to spin, I don't think the blogs are going to let them. I read both the blogs and the MSM.

We have known about the probability of NOLA becoming a bowl of toxic soup for years, as a previous poster pointed out.
The administration is lying to us. Even Bush, liar in chief, has said this could not have been forseen. Bush has also hired total incompetents, government hacks, and fires anyone who disagrees with him. Chertoff has no emergency managmemt experience. Brown ran a Thoroughbred Horse Association for 11 years and was fired from that. WTF??? So after five years of Bush, we have the best government you can expect under the administration of a narcissist (and probably a psychopath) who has set up the government to line his and his cronys' pockets.

Guess who automatically has the job of cleaning up the area? It's Halliburton. Last time I checked, Halliburton is not a federal agency. They are using a private company as an arm of FEMA. More profits for Bush cronies.
 
I read an article today that explained why many people who did have cars couldn't leave. Many would have had to leave family members behind because not everyone could fit in the car. Most live paycheck to paycheck and did not have enough money to provide extra gas or shelter for their families. And many had no cars. Anyone who blames these people for staying has to be living with blinders on.

I am sorry, but we are going to have to talk about class and race in our society. The secret is out. The social fabric has been torn and it is screamingly obvious that we do not take care of those in our society who need care when they need care. Instead, we indulge those that have more than they know what to do with. The fact is that most of the poor in NOLA were working, contributing, tax paying citizens who were left to die like animals. The point that I am trying to make is that the poor of NOLA are not the dregs of society, but the administration acted as if they didn't matter. If we don't talk about it, we are playing right back into the administration's hands.

I saw no hesitation after 9/11. The families of those that died received millions. Were they any more deserving than the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing? Were they any more deserving than the people of NOLA? Do you think any of the individual NOLA survivors will receive millions? Does the rapid response in NYC have something to do with class? Does it also have something to do with political fodder? The reason the response was slow in NOLA (Bush talking about Social Security and playing the guitar, Condi seeing a play, playing tennis and shoe shopping, Cheney invisible as usual) is because the people in charge do not give a rat's ass about people who are not likely to vote for them.

Blaming local officials isn't going to work.. Do you know how seriously our cities are underfunded? In NOLA, the full police force is 1700 men and women, which is ridiculous. That is less than 600 officers per shift, even if everyone worked 7 days a week. Because of tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, fire departments, police, libraries and school funding has been sliced to the bone. The states are also underfunded and are picking up the slack from all the federal tax breaks. Neither the governor of LA or Ray Nagin, the mayor, had the funds or the authority to commandeer buses and planes to get those people out of there. They did the best they could with the little that they had. With competent federal authority, food and water and rescue would have been available within a day. Nagin and the state government trusted that federal aid would come through swiftly. They were promised help time and again for three days only to see help not materialize. Then it became spin about rioters, crimes and looting. Of course, if we had not been involved in Iraq the troops could have gotten there sooner. FEMA wouldn't go in because of security issues and did not let the Red Cross in either....no heroism....just a bunch of self-serving cowards.

As I said yesterday, this massive tragedy is showing terrorists how absolutely unprepared we are for attack. The previous tax cuts and the war in Iraq are draining us. By the way, Saddam Hussain was a creature of US foreign policy because of the overthrow of the Shah of Iran. But how quickly people forget history.

Anyone that wants to remain in denial about all this is welcome to do so, but don't bash me for talking about it. If a government is all about greed and does not take care of its citizenry (which is what we pay taxes for), what kind of government is it? 

An angry, disgusted, but clearheaded,
Amethyst

[Stormchild]

This is the web site for the New Orleans Times-Picayune. They remained in the city until their building was flooded to the second story, and then fled. They have just begun publishing on paper again, I think today, but they have kept the Web site going through everything. I haven't read them before this event, so I don't have any history on their editorial stance, but I imagine that is a side issue - for them and everyone depending on them - just now. They should be a fairly authoritative source of info on events in the city.

http://www.nola.com/

Added on edit: and they have been publishing for more than 150 years... that makes me want to cry... again...