Katrina's aftermath

did they evacuate manhattan? seriously, if they did i wasn't aware of it.

It's exactly what they need right now, and no amount is piddly.

Well, people didn't leave the hurricane zone because they assumed they could survive it based on past experience or that the hurricane would miss. Telling people that any sort of nuclear attack has occurred would cause them to completely lose their minds, simply because that's how people have been educated. Weathermen = sometimes wrong, nuclear anything = you fucking die fast. I'm sure a couple people who were less than mentally competent would stay, but nowhere near the amounts that stayed in New Orleans.

Additionally, anywhere they moved, and in fact, still in the city of NY or where ever, there would still be an infrastructure. Right now, there's so much damage in the surrounding areas that there's no phones, no electricity, etc. No way to communicate, and no way to get around, because water covers everything. People would be able to use trains, boats, their cars, and feet to get out. Right now, they're trapped in their attics because there's 12 feet of water.

Refugee wise and the logistics of having to clean up the city, yes, that would be similar. I think the likelihood of violence as we see it wouldn't occur, or if it did, it would do so immediately.

hahaha, the Dutch pump system is small potatoes compared to the one New Orleans has. It would get wiped out by a strong category 1 hurricane. After they had their disaster in the 50s and decided to get serious about flood control, guess which American city they turned to for advice and the latest technology?

a piddly monetary donation can feed a lot of people!

My aunt's house is destroyed. I don't know the condition of family in Algiers, or several friends that live down there. None of the phones work. Cell phones are near useless. All circuits are overloaded.

SWAT teams are being sent into New Orleans. I saw several of them at a convenience store up the street an hour ago, one of them wearing two pistols on his belt, gunfighter style.

There are paranoid rumors about looters spreading to LaPlace and Gonzales, and it's pissing me off.

I have a general understanding of what was going on, but the reality is still sinking in.

Also, a lot of people have been buying maps, and plan on going into New Orleans whether it's permitted or not. Some of these people are going vigilante.

On the bright side, there's a lot of charitable work going on. By the LSU fieldhouse, there are throngs of volunteers gathered, and mountains of goods donated for the evacuees.

......

MAKES YA THINK

Its pretty much what everyone who's been pulled to safety has said. "Oh, well, I lived through the last hurricane, I figured I'd be fine"..."I didn't think it was anything to worry about", et al. Having a nuclear device go off sends a very different signal in everyone's brains. I can guarantee you this.

It was spread across every media outlet. TV, radio, print. The only way to miss it would be to have been blind and deaf; basically someone in a coma or a lower state of consciousness. Nature triggers certain responses in people. For instance, when engineers work on buildings and model fires, they assume that some people will go towards the fire, even if they have no capability to do anything about it. Certain disasters also trigger different responses based on how people have been trained to react. Telling people to worry about a hurricane or blizzard, for instance, is tough, because many people have grow accustomed to storms missing or fizzling out, and therefore don't take proper precautions when the "big one" finally arrives. On the other hand, telling people that a nuclear plant is melting down will cause panic and mass evacuation without being asked, simply because its such a rare and extreme circumstance.

HELLO most folks were TOO FUCKING POOR TO LEAVE! jesus christ! fuck!

Media types saying "Well, they CHOSE to stay" just a bullshit rationalization for not havign to care about folks.

xpost

yeah, wot gear said.

that's why the opened the superdome to people.

Lots of people were too poor to leave or own vehicles, but if you own a house, you have a car and you can go. I've yet to hear a single family pulled from a home today say "well, we just couldn't leave because we don't have the money". Honestly now: do you believe that New Orleans is so poor that 10-20% of its citizens are completely incapable of transporting themselves or finding transportation from others out of the city? That they're so completely impoverished, that they only have access to their local neighborhood?

Initally, only 10-15,000 people were there. That means that everyone else in the city was in a structure of some kind, probably one that they live in. If they have somewhere to live, they probably have a vehicle or know someone with a vehicle. Like I said: Go watch the interviews with people who are being rescued, and see how many "well, I just didn't have the cash to bail" responses you get. Or maybe its just the media making it all up for some unexplainable reason.

or! I know! maybe if you live in rent-controlled housing, maybe this ain't quite the case!

've yet to hear a single family pulled from a home today say "well, we just couldn't leave because we don't have the money".

wot Gear said:

the media has been quite irresponsible in some of what they've highlighted, to say the least.

So they don't know anyone with vehicles either? Besides, what does this have to do with comparing New Orleans to a city like NYC or Chicago in a dirty bomb attack? Those cities all have many more bridges, escape routes, modes of transportation (subways, trains, ferries), etc. Are you trying to make the point to me that you'd have 3 million people left in NYC in the event of dirty bomb attacks across the 5 bouroughs?

>the media has been quite irresponsible in some of what they've highlighted, to say the least.<

How do you even know its been highlighted?

And maybe some viagra for dykes? (No pun intended.)

Yes, some of New Orleans really was that impoverished, prior to Katrina.

if you're unemployed or semi-employed and have to choose between getting an oil change or feeding your kids, you're gonna ride the bus.

i didn't make that comparision. also, note that Manhattan varies in scale and landscape from New Orleans by a bit...

across the 5 bouroughs?

LOOK OUT STATEN ISLAND! THEY COMING FOR YOU, TOO!

I would believe that some do...but that the majority of people that stayed in New Orleans were there because of that reason? No. I don't buy that one bit. The percentage of people who stayed in New Orleans, from what I've read, was lower than that of the percentage of people who stayed in Gulfport or Biloxi (which neared 40%).

In a city? I call bullshit. The only people living completely off the grid in this country (at least the vast majority of them) are doing so in highly rural areas, and even they have communication equipment of some kind. The number of people without a transistor radio in the US is in the fractions of 1 percent, and somewhere around 95% of all households own a TV. If these people are taking a bus to work, they're going to hear the call for evacuation from the Emergency Preparedness System that, in the state of Louisiana, like ALL states, has to provide information regarding evacuation once such an order is issued, somewhere, at some time. I wouldn't be surprised to know that there were cops driving down the street telling people to leave their homes either, and giving people information to go to the Superdome or elsewhere, especially since BUSES were set up to bring people there.

aaron brown is an embarrassment. he sounded like he wanted to go kill looters himself. (jeezus, enough with the fucking looters. on the one hand, an entire city is submerged in water, on the other hand, black kids stealing sneakers from water-logged stores in their completely destroyed city and how we can best deal with them, hmmm, let's run with the lack of jail-space angle.)

keep in mind that the poorest non-homeless people in nyc are still better off than poor people in most other places. there are many reasons why this is true but the point is that it's true. the first time i saw very poor areas outside of greater nyc i was amazed because i'd never seen that kind of financial rock-bottom on such a large scale. and i grew up in the old, scary, pre-giuliani new york.

Fine then. Pick any city in the US. Any city. Hell, what about Detroit? Its the poorest city in America, according to a poll that just got released. Would you expect a similar portion of the city to stay put in the case of a dirty bomb attack, or do you think you'd see what was seen today (people just walking or riding bikes to try and reach safety) much faster in the process?

Yes. Yes, I do. You cannot use the "well, I would've" in this case.

What percentage do you think didn't get any info whatsoever? I'm serious. I want to know what you think it was. Are you honestly going to tell me that even 10% of the city somehow didn't know from police, news reports, newspapers, etc that there was a possibly catastrophic event going to happen? How do you know that? What evidence do you have? That people didn't leave? The only event that people *will* (and by this, I mean 98% of the populace) leave for, immediately, and probably in a very disorderly fashion, is a nuclear one.

People will stay through storms, and New Orleans doesn't seem to be statistically higher in the percentage of citizens/tourists that stayed compared to any other city in history when faced with a hurricane with possibly disasterous conequences in the US.* In fact, it seems to be lower. This would indicate to me that the populace probably had a better idea than most do of the destructive tendencies of the storm and got the hell out of Dodge. And those who didn't have a proper vehicle to then are stealing them or walking out today.

(for comparison, lets assume that the 1 million that the mayor of New Orleans claimed fled the city is correct. that means that 76% of the city evacuated completely from New Orleans. on the other hand, Hurricane Hugo (http://www.emforum.org/vlibrary/lc000913.htm) only saw 59% of the population leave the city of Charleston, which is where the eye came ashore)

What percentage of the population of New Orleans doesn't own a vehicle? Let's all guess. Because I'm sure this figure is online, and I can find it.

I'm betting 7-8%.

Eat shit, Bill.

Well Fed Media Pigs Call It "Looting"

Steven Black

Scores of articles and news reports have described the survival efforts of those stranded in New Orleans as "looting". Calls have gone out to have the National Guard drop its efforts to save lives and focus more energy on "stopping" those savage people carrying diapers, packages of dried noodles, and first aide kits from trying to survive. Under martial law, such efforts would amount to "assassinate first, drag the body away later" tactics. That our media considers the survival of the defenseless during an unprecedented disaster less important than propagandizing about the rights of private property owners who have fled for their own survival is stark evidence of the depravity of our times. The cries and moans of Fox News personnel over those "stolen" diapers far exceeds their voiced concern over the lives of the brown and black people sloshing their way through a growing lake of rancid floating bodies.

Personally, I'd like to see Bill O'Reilly sloshing his way through the chemical stew, dragging himself passed the decaying bodies, telling his own children, "Sorry, even though my wallet if full of cash, I can't feed you today because the owners of the store have fled and no one is there to accept my payment for food. You'll just have to die, my children."

Anyone who would not steal food to save their family or themselves when no other option is available is a criminal. Anyone who would not smash the windows of a pharmacy when that was the only way to obtain life save medicine during a disaster is unworthy of life. Any society that worships the property rights of a diaper owner over the well being of a diaperless child can eat shit.

http://neworleans.indymedia.org/news/2005/08/3831.php

I'm not saying more could have been done in this case on such short notice (though maybe it could have), I'm saying that being poor and not having the full information that we had several days ago were contributing factors to many people not getting the hell out. Would those who stayed actually stayed if they really understood the flooding/levee breaks were possible?

Newspapers, radio, and TV are nearly universal, however, even in a poor place like New Orleans. New Orleans, as poor as it was, wasn't the third world, where the majority lived in tar paper shacks with no electricity. Even if you believe the numbers were off, and say that, perhaps, an equivalent percentage of people in New Orleans stayed to Charleston (a more affluent and educated city), that would mean that half a million people stayed. No one estimates that half a million people stayed.

Hugo, btw, is a great hurricane for comparison: it was a Category 4 in 1989, hitting a big city dead on with the expectation that it would wash most of it away in a huge storm surge. Yes, there was no bowl effect like in New Orleans, but that would help explain why so many more people left New Orleans.

>I'm not saying more could have been done in this case on such short notice (though maybe it could have), I'm saying that being poor and not having the full information that we had several days ago were contributing factors to many people not getting the hell out. Would those who stayed actually stayed if they really understood the flooding/levee breaks were possible?<

I want to know how you know that even a small percentage of those who stayed knew that the possibilty of levee breaks existed. Because I sure as hell don't see any figures.