now, onward to more important things:
At 05:47 PM 8/30/2005, ThatRogersWoman wrote:
>Reports re water in
>Quarter vary. Amazingingly, the Garden District remains relatively
>dry and with services. Do not know if that will last.
>
> - Deborah
A reporter said it was dry, with sides streets a bit wet. People are wandering about, oblivious to what's happened b/c they have no radios or teevees. One woman, though, was carrying around a drink -- not much changed for her! :)
Poking around that blog link you sent, I saw this, which is good for a laugh: Get your ass beers, heeeyah! They're HYOOOOOOOOOOOOGE. Get 'em to go:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/barbee/38416277/
But, that was this afternoon. Tonight they say that the levees won't hold and the pumping stations are broken. They mayor expects 9-12 feet, possibly 20 feet, of water to bury the remaining dry areas of the city and, of course, continue to flood the already flooded.
I've appended, below, word from a man who belongs to a general political discussion list. He's a librarian -- specializes in environment/biology as I recall, lives southwest of NOLA. He's safely holed up elsewhere, for now.
I'm so pissed I could spit. After reading blogs, listening to people say "why didn't they leave" and pointing fingers suggesting that the people who stayed were cowboys, I finally hear a reporter say the obvious: a lot of these people didn't have the means to get out.
last year, as storms approached, people weren't given time off, let alone get their paycheck early in order to buy stuff to help them survive. The storm came and they didn't have food in the fridge. If they did find time to get to a grocery store, the stores were wiped clean of supplies -- least the first time 'round, with Charley. These are people who live paycheck to paycheck, something a lot of people don't quite grasp. Oh, they _say_ they live paycheck to paycheck, but they really have no clue what it means to really do that and to have utterly no resources to which to turn: no family, no credit cards, no property, no nothing.
Reporters and self-absorbed white middle class morons scratch their ass and say, "Why didna they leave? Why didna they stock up?"
Last year, a Walmart cashier told me that, by the third hurricane, she'd charged more on her credit card than she'd ever charged in her life. If you have no money, a job that affords only bare survival, no savings, no car or one that barely gets you where you need to go, getting out the Bowl would, indeed, have been difficult to do.
Not to mention the lines at the gas stations or the packed highways had you even tried to go. We were lucky last year, since we weren't stuck at the south end of the peninsula, with only bridges to get us the hell out.
So, they took their chances. The little creeps posting to MSNBC, blogs, and writing in to the news stations are saying that they ought to be fined for staying behind -- these people ought to get their heads out of their butt or, better yet, they ought to be forced to spend a year living on a poverty wages, with no support network to help them.
OH, and government officials and some reporters are making a big deal out of the looting. Oh, who cares? They were stealing diapers, water, fruit punch, and medicine from what i saw. They have the nerve to go on about citizens stealing from other citizens. Godamn! Oh! Dear. they stole bottled Hi-C from Walmart. Oooooo nooooooooo. Walmart was going to come in, toss everything into a bin, sell it off at some ridiculously low price, and distribute to stores called "Dent and Bents". It would have been more expensive for them to count it and take stock. They will toss the crap and report it to the insurance company. Same thing with the CDS kids stole from the Best Buy.
(yes, yes, I understand the need to commandeer the stuff and then distribute it rationally. but... it ain't gonna happen because of massive planning failures all around.)
Oh, the horror. Some poor kid stole a cart full of sneakers from Walmart. Walmart brand sneakers. Now there was a cartful of gold bullion, I tell ya.
Not one of them stopped to think what it must be like for a kid who actually does think a cart full of Walmart brand sneaks is a gold mine. Do they even think about this? Does it occur to them what shitheads they are? Can they look at themselves in the mirror without their stomachs turning in self-loathing.
Did anyone catch the prisoners? There they were standing in the lanes in the middle of the rows of cells, up to their underarms in water! The jail was flooded and they still had the prisoners inside, the roof torn off. They were standing there, nearly to their necks in water.
What a bunch of idiots who run that jail. The other half of the prison population had been removed from the jail barracks, lined up in rows on a highway onramp, itself nearly covered with water.
Who cares if they escape. Where they gonna go -- exactly? And so the hell what if they do. Honestly. A bunch of fascists more concerned with escaping prisoners than saving their lives or keeping them from having to stand in water up to their underarms. What a buncha sick assclowns.
Also, MAtt, thanks for the info. Still, what I don't get is this: FEMA is supposed to look at the big picture. They are supposed to have a plan in place to evacuate _any_ city and house its residents elsewhere. That's what this agency is for -- well, it was for fighting the commies, but whatever.
There are any number of scenarios where an entire city might need to be evacuated. As I understand it,that's what these people are supposed to do: strategize for those kinds of events.
I know people do this. i was involved in a Disaster REcovery Planning and Business Continuity Planning project with a couple of clients after 911. I read the reports. I read backgrounders on how companies plan this out. Most of it was written by the government to begin with! Because, believe me, corporate american does NOT do DR and BCP unless it's forced to . Even 9.11 didn't put many of them in the mode to spend money on it. It's just not in their game plan to spend money on such stuff.
And yet, poor black people are assholes and losers for not planning ahead.
I got to thinking that, given the way FEMA likes to grab as much power as possible, maybe they are playing "dumb" to wrangle more FEMA empowering legislation out of Congress?
In any event, you have to wonder if, say, they had to evacuate a city when a nuke power plant or chemical plant blows, if they have a plan.
And then I think: they're so reliant on individual mobility -- having that car -- that they have no clue how to evacuate people en masse. no frickin' clue.
maybe this will spark the development of an interstate public transportation system! HA!
I amuse myself.
I'm sorry. I owe people replies. I'm so depressed I can't get out of my own way and the only thing that moved me out of my own way was being incensed at the things I'd read and the idiots on television.
One of the politicans said, "We should all pray tomorrow"
R says, "yeah, let's do that. 5 minutes, tops. Then you'd better start doing something because dog ain't gonna help ya lady."
From Con, at the other list:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hello,
A few quick notes, facts, rumors, and other things about the storm. I haven't seen the news all day, as I returned from where we just moved a few weeks ago, so I don't know what is generally known about the effects of the hurricane. Most of this info is coming out of the only news escaping New Orleans. The entire southeast of Louisiana is without appreciable power. Houma, over an hour to the west-southwest of N.O., has electricity. However, it is disconnected from the grid and locals are asked to conserve. All other power sources in that part of the state are on generators--hospitals, mostly. Diesel that runs the generators is low. Not only is N.O. without power, they are completely without everything. The entire infrastructure will have to be rebuilt...once the flooding has been stopped and the pumps are repaired. Then the toxic waste will have to be (somehow) removed before repairing leaking gas mains. Once that is completed, sewage and gas lines will have to be replaced completely. Only then will poles be repaced and electrical lines re-strung. At the same time, all connecting power stations will have to be repaired or reconstructed from the ground up. The optimistic timetable is a month before they can bring electricity to the city. Then electrical teams will have to determine what areas and what blocks get power, and also determine if houses are safe enough to get plugged back in. This, keep in mind, is for almost all of the city of N.O. and the ring of towns that make up the greater metro area. In the majority of the city, inspectors will have to check every home. No one can estimate how long this will take. The water continues to pour into the towns that make up the greater N.O. area. Sheriff's deputies were staying at a hotel in the city. When the flooding started, they were rescued by boat. Everytyhing is done by boat. while this was occurring, a shark was seen cruising under the water. As someone put it, now N.O. is part of the Gulf of Mexico. It isn't the only parish (ie county) to fall into this category. Plaquemines parish, the finger that follows the river until the land abruptly ends 100 miles downstream of N.O., has been reduced by half. At least 40 miles of the lower parish has been 'recovered by the Gulf.' Whether or not the land will be there when the sea level drops to normal levels is unknown. Likewise, areas of Jefferson Parish and St. Bernard Parish were under as much as 20 feet of water. No one seems to know if this is still the case. Louisiana's battle against coastal erosion appears to have been lost. Folks who toured by air have said that the maps will have to be re-drawn, as huge swaths of coastal areas were eroded to muddy water by wave action. There are no numbers of dead in the city. Bodies have been reported floating in canals and other water bodies. There are probably still thousands trapped alive in attics, without water and food, fighing fire ants and water moccasins for whatever dry 'land' still exists. I drove back home this morning to check on the rental and see if we would have a place to sleep, once power has been restored. Our town is about 60- 75 miles from the western edge of the eye of the storm. Our area received catagory 2-type destruction, snapped tree limbs, shingles gone, etc. Driving down to work showed cat 3 damage in areas without significant forested areas. All I can compare this to in my mind is the flood of 1927. I think there will be tent communities on the levees this fall around the N.O. area as the city rebuilds from scratch. Off to bed. I'll report back tomorrow with things that I know I've forgotten to write down this evening.
photos and the N.O. newspaper here: <http://www.nola.com/hurricane/katrina/>
Con