Katrina's aftermath

That's a fantastic strawman to come up with and throw at me.

Of course not. Probably a good percentage were though. Probably near half. I'm not stupid. I saw the people lining up into the Superdome just like everyone else.

https://www.redcross.org/donate/donation-form.asp

is it a good or bad thing that you now have to specify where ALL the money has to go? I mean, yeah, they got shit for suspected shenanigans with donations 4 years ago, but at some point, they do need to come up with funds for infrastructure(walkie talkies, envelopes, gasoline, bandwidth costs, etc)

Could have foo--- nevermind.

A) Other people have automobiles. Rich white people weren't the only people driving out of the city, for god sakes. Its statisically impossible unless you believe significantly more than the estimated 300-400,000 are left are currently in New Orleans. There were also various forms of transportation bringing people both outside the city and within the city to "shelters of last resort", such as the Superdome. Its not like its some concealed fact.

Tell you what: You look at the figures, and you give me a rough idea of how many people you think stayed, and how many of those people chose to do so versus those who were forced to. We've got a ton of information at hand here, so let's see you give it a shot. I'm sure you'd rather just criticize, however, and offer no realistic alternative, other than "you're an idiot" and "you're a dumb italian", which is basically all you've done.

(In picking a charity, its smart to send cash (its spent much faster than a check) and to designate what the cash is for. charities do use events like this to take portions of donations and put portions away for future events, so this pretty much guarantees its use for what you want)

I'm betting 7-8%.

-- Alan Conceicao (deadandrestles...), September 1st, 2005.

Also, in that year 27+% of households didn't own a car

-- my name is john. i reside in chicago. (econjoh...), September 1st, 2005.

Alan, your initial theory was obviously based on a gross misunderstanding of the level of poverty in New Orleans, as shown here. Yet after a few people have corrected you, you persist in that same false reading of the situation based on the same false assumptions. Who's foolish?

how many of that number are

-too young to drive
-handicapped in some way that impairs them from driving (e.g. blindness)
-have had their licenses revoked because of traffic violations or unpaid parking tickets
-have nonworking or faulty cars that wouldn't survive an evacuation

xpost

haha new orleans only HAS a population of half a million!

does louisiana law prohibit the elderly from driving if they're of sound mind and have good vision and can reach the pedal and stuff?

absolute anarchy and lots of people of color doing "illegal" things.

what, exactly, is meant by this?

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?

to quote from the Clarion Herald, the official newspaper of the New Orleans Diocese (Catholic):

“According to a survey by the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center, the median household income for Orleans Parish residents in the year 2000 was $27,133, compared to $32,566 for Louisiana residents and $41,994 for the U.S. population as a whole.

"The national poverty level in the United States is 12.4 percent, based on the 2000 census showing a population of 273.9 million. In Louisiana, the poverty level is 19.6 percent for the state's 4.3 million residents. In New Orleans, the poverty rate is an astounding 27.9 percent for the city's 468,453 residents.”

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.

wrong again, alan, it’s Cleveland.

thanks for the good thoughts people. alan, go fuck yourself.

Like I said before: If you want to believe that *everyone*, or at the very least, the overwhelming percentage of people in New Orleans that stayed did so because they had no other choice, fine. I see no reason to anticipate this being de facto given past history of other, similar disasters in North America. Even with the figures that we have from 1999. I'm sorry, it doesn't. And no matter what's said about it now, there's not much that could have been done then, and its all bellyaching at the moment because its not making a difference now. I still don't see what about the hurricane makes it similar to a dirty bomb, nor do I see any vast deficiency in the efforts of the city of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana to warn its citizens.

If 1.3 million people live in the New Orleans metro area, and approximately 1 million left (according to the mayor of New Orleans and Governor Blanco), that leaves about what?

my best to your family, stence, and everyone else as well. Thanks for checking in, badgerminor.

does louisiana law prohibit the elderly from driving if they're of sound mind and have good vision and can reach the pedal and stuff?

-- stckhlm cnd (theundergroundhom...), September 1st, 2005

I dunno, I more just meant elderly folk possibly being too feeble or scared to jump in the car and head away from town.

ARTICLE, ARTICLE, SOURCES.

Survivalists are typically racists? I dunno, could you take that more out of context?

>wrong again, alan, it’s Cleveland.<

http://www.detnews.com/2005/census/0508/30/01-297868.htm

Dated yesterday. Thanks for the kind words.

Stence, I'm glad your family are (relatively) OK.

charities do use events like this to take portions of donations and put portions away for future events, so this pretty much guarantees its use for what you want

So, remember, if you don't trust your favorite charity of choice to do what's best with the money (and yet you still want to give them your money) and you want to make sure that disasters that don't get as much publicity end up getting screwed over (and yet surely you specifying you want your money to go to Katrina relief will just make them earmark more of someone else's money to go to the other unworthy disasters) then be sure to make some charity organization administrator's life a little more annoying by being very persnickety about exactly how your money is spent.

Population
Total (2000)
Density 1,337,726 (metropolitan area)

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200508/s1448388.htm

"An estimated 1 million of the area's 1.3 million people are believed to have evacuated."

Also, they've announced they're going to be donating some funds from this year's Jerry Lewis Telethon(starts this Sunday).

It very much counts, so no need to apologize. The whole point is to discuss everything, and badgerminor and Stence's posts are good examples as to why.

it could have taken into account the way a lot of people get their news -- remember that many people who have tvs don't watch any news (and those with radios only listen to music or sports), people that far below the poverty line are unlikely to have any internet access worth speaking of, and there's probably a substantial percentage of that sub-poverty population that never learned to read, so fuck a newspaper. yes they interact with the outside world and yes they have relatives, but those friends and relatives may not have stressed the severity of the impending hurricane.

Yes, don't listen to the guy who worked for a charity, certainly someone like myself. Nor these people:

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050831/OPINION/508310368/1002

"But for most of us, the best way to help is by giving cash. "

Of course, quoting the president, who said exactly what I said today during his evening press conference might also be frowned upon, so maybe I shouldn't do that.

Nagin, whose pre-hurricane evacuation order got most of his city of a half a million out of harm's way, estimated 50,000 to 100,000 people remained, and said that 14,000 to 15,000 a day could be evacuated in ensuing convoys.

"We have to," Nagin said. "It's not living conditions."

Minor differences between 300-400K and 50-100K. You should update your sources.

That's why its mandated by federal law for all states to have emergency response systems that cover radio and TV. Anyone in the US has seen the tests go off regularly, usually at annoying times. The system causes all stations to go into fullbore news, basically informing the populace of what's going on. This occured in New Orleans.

retort pouch's photo link upthread is worth reposting

http://hattiesburgamerican.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=HURRICANE

yeah, that's what i was on about. I mean, at some point, why can't one just say, "yo, here, take this, man. go help people."

>Nagin, whose pre-hurricane evacuation order got most of his city of a half a million out of harm's way, estimated 50,000 to 100,000 people remained, and said that 14,000 to 15,000 a day could be evacuated in ensuing convoys.

"We have to," Nagin said. "It's not living conditions."

Minor differences between 300-400K and 50-100K. You should update your sources. <

That's because you're talking about Orleans Parish and I'm talking about Metro New Orleans. You're right...and so am I.

That said, it seems like basically the same argument whether it's 100,000 out of 500,000 or 300,000 out of 1.3 million.

I'd just, you know, prefer not to be called a moron or ghoul.

-- kingfish 'doublescoop' moose tracks (jdsalmo...), September 1st, 2005.

I'd like to earmark my donation for people who 'find' food as opposed to people who 'loot' it. And also, I only want to help people who help themselves, and not those good-for-nothings who stayed in the city.

er, how is having a checkbox right there on the website saying "click here if you want your donation to go to hurricane relief" being persnickety?

you're not reporting, you're SPECULATING in a very insensitive manner on why people stayed. it's not fucking helping. all it's doing is making you look like a massive douchebag who hates poor people. get one fucking clue already.

xpost if you don't want to be a called a moron or a ghoul, the easiest way not to is to NOT BE ONE.

my turn to get into baseless projecting and ask, then, if we really think that of a total of 450K people potentially 1/4 of them didn't leave? I'd have to guess she's talking about everyone in the area...

That said, it seems like basically the same argument whether it's 100,000 out of 500,000 or 300,000 out of 1.3 million.

If you mean that it's a shitload of people or are in trouble, then yes. But moving 100K people v. moving 400K people... I'll take 100K

it's ok, just grow out of it

No idea. Remember, these organizations not only have to fund themselves to pay their employees and make various materials, but are typically all over the globe dealing with various disasters. If you'd like to dedicate your money in the direction of this disaster in particular, its asked that you do so. Its basically reactionary thinking that a lot of people now put forth following the outburst of anger at the Red Cross not spending all the money given immediately post 9/11 in NY and Washington.

There are risks of pockets of shortages in various parts of the country," said Edward L. Morse, an executive adviser at Hetco, a New York-based oil trading company. "There should be no gasoline lines in New York and New England, or California, but inland markets, like parts of Illinois, Tennessee, Kentucky or Missouri, Memphis and Atlanta, are vulnerable."

In North Carolina, Gov. Mike Easley said the state had only one week of gasoline supplies and some stations were already running out of fuel. "We are not out of gas, but we are running low," Mr. Easley said.

Sims Floyd Jr., the executive director of the South Carolina Petroleum Marketers Association, said the worst was yet to come. "We're facing a severe supply shortage very soon."

[...]No active refiners are in a position to increase their production to make up for the lost output from storm-damaged refineries.

"It doesn't matter that the government opens the strategic reserves because there is very little slack in the refining business," said Craig Pennington, the director of the global energy group at Schroders in London.

[...] Coast Guard crews reported that up to 20 rigs and platforms had either sunk or were adrift, Larry Chambers, a public information officer, said. At least one gas rig has caught fire.

The Mars platform of Royal Dutch Shell - which alone accounts for 15 percent of the gulf's oil production - is "severely damaged," the Coast Guard said in a release.

[...]"I hate to be an alarmist, but we're in a situation without much precedent," said David Pursell, a principal with Pickering Energy Partners in Houston. "With the gasoline market as tight as it is, people complain about $3 gas but they'll put $5 gas in their car if they suddenly think it's not available."