JetaTek
Disco's
Bitch
Registered: Mar
2002
Location: Dover,
DE
|
quote:
News people have driven into the city with satellite TV
transmission equipment, looked around, sent out live
reports, and driven out again. But no help went to
Charity
Hospital. This failure to provide help was
repeated over and
over again in the city. Today, more
than seven days after
the hurricane winds were over,
significant numbers of people
are still trapped in their
apartments, or the roofs or
attics of their small
houses, without any food or water
other then what was at
hand. Still trapped.
Literally many hundreds of
people skilled in disaster and
flood rescue, offering
boats, busses, planes, even trains,
have been turned
away from the New Orleans area because of
red tape. Just
one example, my local Loudoun County police
department
received a frantic call for help from the head of
police
in an area near New Orleans -- an area where people
were
dying in demolished buildings, corpses were laying
unattended, thousands of people were without water or
food.
Power was out and phones were down, but the
official calling
for help was able to get through on a
cell phone, his call
"Please, please, we are desperate
for help, can you send
your people." My local police
head (1,500 miles from New
Orleans) went into emergency
mode, assembled a large team of
his officers, vehicles,
food and water, tents and supplies
so his people could
be self-sustaining, and promised the
people calling for
help that his men were on the way. After
driving
hundreds of miles, they were stopped and told to go
back
home -- because the local police head asking for help,
in the midst of death and devastation, had not gone
through
the proper channels. It is now 7 days after the
hurricane,
and my local officials still have not
received permission
for their police officers to begin
travel to Louisiana.
To summarize, the flood in New
Orleans is the result of man
-- four years ago stopping
maintenance work on protective
levees (similar to the
Dutch dike system) needed to protect
the city, then the
U.S. Federal government failing to plan
for such a
disaster (For example, providing at least some
emergency
disaster communications. There are none.) then the
Federal officials stepping in to "take control" and
actually
preventing local officials, who know well what
to do, from
taking needed action.
Are my
statements accurate? While people are dying, having
waited more than a week for rescue, and while there are
corpses all over this American city rotting in the hot
sun,
equipment is being diverted from rescue work to
create
"photo opportunity" scenes for the touring
President of the
United States.
I can take you
to a small town where a school building was
used to
house people rescued from New Orleans, crowded
together
with no electricity, no water, no toilet
facilities, no
food, no ventilation, no communication to
their loved
ones, desperate and with some seriously ill.
This school
building is across the street from an Air Force
base
where troops were stationed, playing basketball and
lounging in the sun -- with food, water, medical
facilities.
But the troops were not permitted to leave
their base to
help the people in desperate need, and the
victims were not
permitted to enter the Air Force Base.
As upsetting as the above statements are, they are
true, and
need to be said. For shame. For shame.
Remember, it was NOT wind damage that took New
Orleans, that
destroyed the city. Yes, there was a
hurricane. The city has
survived such hurricanes many
times before -- it was the
collapse of two levees that
happened a day after the winds
subsided. Is this high
water that collapsed the levees an
unusual event for New
Orleans? Think about it. The
Mississippi River rises and
floods in the Spring of almost
every year. Floods and
threats to the levee system are not
new, and not
unusual. New Orleans knows how to deal with
high water
threats. But not if the Federal government both
(a)
stops work on maintaining the levees, and (b) ties the
hands of local officials for rescue efforts.
2)
The hurricane disaster along the Gulf coastline to the east
of New Orleans is a different situation. This was truly
an
event of nature, the damage done by the hurricane and
mostly
by the wall of water pushed on shore by the
winds, what is
called a storm surge. I have lived
through hurricanes on
the Gulf Coast, there can be
devastating damage from winds,
but the huge wall of
water that swept through is unique.
The devastation is
terrible, many lives were lost, but I see
this as an act
of nature, not an act of inhuman greed on the
part of
man.
My apologies for the above, but it needs to be
said.
It also must be said that many, many good
people are working
night and day on rescue efforts in
New Orleans and along the
Gulf Coast. They need to be
applauded.
I also must say that the several hundred
thousand black and poor
people in New Orleans are among
the kindest, most moral people
in the world. They will
stop their activities to help others,
they willingly
share their food and money with others in need.
They are
not disposable, and they are not garbage. To see them
treated in this fashion offends me deeply.
I
expect that some good Americans will wish to protest that I
should not embarrass my county in such fashion, that the
ISOC
list is not the place for this, or perhaps wish to
say that
this did not happen. If you feel I am wrong, I
would like to
hear from you.
IP:
68.49.217.254 |
09-06-2005 07:22
PM
