When the levee breaks

hint

party record with a siren
dominic said:
still unclear why so many people were "abandoned" there -- what the evacuations plan were, why they're still stranded, etc

I think the biggest flaw in the plan was that they ordered people to leave, but didn't provide the means. It seems that those without cars were simply forgotten or ignored.

The mayor has put the blame for much of the violence and looting on the city's many drug addicts. This makes a lot of sense.

Radio interview with him here:
http://rapidshare.de/files/4632564/nagin.mp3.html
 

DigitalDjigit

Honky Tonk Woman
the looting and violence aren't the problem. the problem is you have tens of thousands of people with no food and water and the government is totally fucking up the distribution of it. They finally started dropping it but in unannounced places where not everyone can see it. People are afraid to get it because the national guard won't let them get close to themselves. The evacuation is moving along but not very fast and noone is allowed from the outside to help.

They fear violence and bring it about like a self-fulfilling prophecy. here's a quote from the interdictor livejournal.

"Bigfoot" is a bar manager and DJ on Bourbon Street, and is a local personality and icon in the city. He is a lifelong resident of the city, born and raised. He rode out the storm itself in the Iberville Projects because he knew he would be above any flood waters. Here is his story as told to me moments ago. I took notes while he talked and then I asked some questions:

Three days ago, police and national guard troops told citizens to head toward the Crescent City Connection Bridge to await transportation out of the area. The citizens trekked over to the Convention Center and waited for the buses which they were told would take them to Houston or Alabama or somewhere else, out of this area.

It's been 3 days, and the buses have yet to appear.

Although obviously he has no exact count, he estimates more than 10,000 people are packed into and around and outside the convention center still waiting for the buses. They had no food, no water, and no medicine for the last three days, until today, when the National Guard drove over the bridge above them, and tossed out supplies over the side crashing down to the ground below. Much of the supplies were destroyed from the drop. Many people tried to catch the supplies to protect them before they hit the ground. Some offered to walk all the way around up the bridge and bring the supplies down, but any attempt to approach the police or national guard resulted in weapons being aimed at them.

There are many infants and elderly people among them, as well as many people who were injured jumping out of windows to escape flood water and the like -- all of them in dire straights.

Any attempt to flag down police results in being told to get away at gunpoint. Hour after hour they watch buses pass by filled with people from other areas. Tensions are very high, and there has been at least one murder and several fights. 8 or 9 dead people have been stored in a freezer in the area, and 2 of these dead people are kids.

The people are so desperate that they're doing anything they can think of to impress the authorities enough to bring some buses. These things include standing in single file lines with the eldery in front, women and children next; sweeping up the area and cleaning the windows and anything else that would show the people are not barbarians.

The buses never stop.

Before the supplies were pitched off the bridge today, people had to break into buildings in the area to try to find food and water for their families. There was not enough. This spurred many families to break into cars to try to escape the city. There was no police response to the auto thefts until the mob reached the rich area -- Saulet Condos -- once they tried to get cars from there... well then the whole swat teams began showing up with rifles pointed. Snipers got on the roof and told people to get back.

He reports that the conditions are horrendous. Heat, mosquitoes and utter misery. The smell, he says, is "horrific."

He says it's the slowest mandatory evacuation ever, and he wants to know why they were told to go to the Convention Center area in the first place; furthermore, he reports that many of them with cell phones have contacts willing to come rescue them, but people are not being allowed through to pick them up.
 

ripley

Well-known member
Dominic - the evacuation "plan" was literally "every one for him/herself" i.e. buy gas for your car and drive it out. buy a bus ticket. etc. Add to that the fucking greyhound station CLOSED on saturday.

there was no plan for people with no money, people in hospitals, the elderly, students away from home. this is why the US is basically a Third World country on steroids.

I just found out the state had already handed over planning for emergies to a private company called (I kid you not) "Innovative Emergency Management" (see here and especially here for more). Ah, privatization..

It's no wonder there's appropriating and looting and violence. What clearer message to people that law and the state has nothing to do with them than being left to drown? What did obeying the law and being poor get them, the chance to drown, starve, or get typhoid?

I can only hope this blows the lid off the joke that America is as a First World/"civilized" nation. At least it has at last gotten some of our craven media figures more lively.
 

dominic

Beast of Burden
ripley said:
I can only hope this blows the lid off the joke that America is as a First World/"civilized" nation. At least it has at last gotten some of our craven media figures more lively.

i don't have a television, but i watched tv this evening with my father -- he's in town dog-sitting for my vacationing sister and her hubby, and he's also a true-believer in bush and the republican party -- so we watched television together at my sister's apartment, the various fox news magazine shows, and i have to say that both geraldo rivera and another fox news reporter on the ground were visibly outraged and communicated outrage over the govt's treatment of the black & poor of new orleans, stranded there for six days, the old and young dying in their midst, etc -- aaron brown on cnn was also very clearly outraged

indeed, i think a lot of people are outraged by the failure of the government to deal with this situation

and it will be interesting to see the political fallout, the consequences

however, as for Lenin's Tomb and Innovative Emergency Management -- is Lenin's take on this accurate??? that is, i find it rather hard to believe that the state would privatise such a central duty of the govt -- i.e., it seems more likely that certain responsibilities may have been contracted out to IEM, but not the overall responsibility for planning and organizing disaster relief and evacuation -- i.e., looks the governor's office, FEMA, the national guard, fed troops, and such charities like red cross and salvation army are the main players
 
Kanye West

During a nationally televised Hurricane Katrina relief show, actor/rapper Kayne West showed the world what he was made of as he went on a tirade against George W. Bush.

"George Bush doesn't care about black people," West said. "They're saying black families are looting and white families are just looking for food...they're giving the (Army) permission to shoot us"

NBC attempted to cut off the out-of-line remarks by cutting to a shot of actor Chris Tucker, but by then, the damage had already been done.

http://www.zebrality.com/media/2005/kanye.avi
 

mms

sometimes
HMGovt said:
During a nationally televised Hurricane Katrina relief show, actor/rapper Kayne West showed the world what he was made of as he went on a tirade against George W. Bush.

"George Bush doesn't care about black people," West said. "They're saying black families are looting and white families are just looking for food...they're giving the (Army) permission to shoot us"

NBC attempted to cut off the out-of-line remarks by cutting to a shot of actor Chris Tucker, but by then, the damage had already been done.

http://www.zebrality.com/media/2005/kanye.avi

that is absolutley fucking fantastic
 

Pearsall

Prodigal Son
sufi said:
38725768_16c66eb58b.jpg

ripped from another forum:
just to balance that corvette c&p above

two separate photo agencies. it would be more a more instructive comparison if they were from the same agency. different agencies have different descriptive policies.
 

Pearsall

Prodigal Son
yeah, that seems fair enough; damning.

on a different tack, check this out:

capt.flpc21109012015.hurricane_katrina_flpc211.jpg


look at all those fucking buses! why in Christ's name did the mayor or the city government not use them to take people out. the buses just in that picture could have hauled off thousands of people.

the response from the city, the state, and the feds has been fucking shambolic all the way through. unbelievable.
 

Jesse D Serrins

Well-known member
happened to catch c-span at 6 this past morning, they were showing Bush on his jaunt through the region.
Watching him striking poses w/ governor of Alabama, Mike Brown of FEMA, some other dudes, all very well dressed and, you know, keeping their composure- Bush getting this completely silly staged briefing of the situation as they all 'very seriously' looked over this big spread of maps and said absolutely nothing of significance, such a depressing joke, it's a wonder why they even go through the motions. "I'm really looking forward to this trip," Bush says. Well I'm sure all the people are really looking forward to seeing you...
 

Pearsall

Prodigal Son
DigitalDjigit said:
It's a bit ridiculous about the looting though. How unsafe could it be? People are just taking stuff from stores (perfectly understandable I think). You can see a really vile reaction on a lot of american boards with people advocating shooting looters on site. Why would it be unsafe for people to walk around? I would think the disease, lack of clean water would be a much bigger danger.

Dude, how naive are you?

New Orleans has always been a very dangerous place.

Here's an illustration for Brits:

Population of New Orleans: 462,269
Population of London: 7,172,000

Homicides in New Orleans in 2004 as of mid-August: 265 (and 192 for 2005 through mid-August!)
Homicides in London in the twelve months to July (put in rolling twelve month period for homicide): 182

Murder rate per 100,000 residents for New Orleans, 2004: 57.33
Murder rate per 100,000 residents for London, 12 months to July 2005: 2.54

Just off these stats New Orleans has (well, had) a murder rate 22.57 times higher than London's in normal times; virtually every report coming out of New Orleans in the last couple of days has emphasized the scale of the anarchy in many parts of the city.
 

dominic

Beast of Burden
new orleans is one of the poorest and most violent places in all of america

or it *was* -- for past 6 days it's been flooded -- an ex-place, an ex-city

and granted, many people who were "looting" did so to get bare necessities

however, many others were young males treating the catastrophe as though it were a game, a chance to get hold of guns and sew anarchy and fear -- treat the situation as a kind of sci-fi, post-apocalyptic game, at least for a day or two

and still others, having lost what little they had, probably concluded they had nothing more at stake in this society and went on a rampage to get what they could while they could

some looters, at least according to the mayor, were drug addicts gone desperately mad

and still others were probably hardcore, psychopathic criminal types -- out to terrorize the streets

but there are some pretty horrorific tales of tourists being robbed, raped, beaten, etc -- though hard to say whether such rumors are true -- but the papers are reporting as much
 

DigitalDjigit

Honky Tonk Woman
It just seems like fear mongering to me. I live near Baltimore and 40 minutes from DC (number 2 and 3 respectively on the list of most dangerous US cities) and I haven't been murdered yet though I don't spend much time in either. A lot of the reports of shooting etc. is rumour. If you watch the news in normal times you would think that it's very dangerous too because that is all they show: murders, rapes and fires.

I still think getting people out of there should be a higher priority than imposing law & order. The number of people shot is dwarfed by the amount killed by thirst, heastroke and lack of medicine.
 
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Pearsall

Prodigal Son
Er, getting people out has been the first priority all along among first-responders on the ground; it was only when the security situation started to spiral out of control that police and national guard had to be reassigned to deal with gangs and assorted thugs.
 

DigitalDjigit

Honky Tonk Woman
that's not what I was hearing. The evacuation didn't really start until Friday. The National Guard started showing up sooner (Wednesday?) but was concentrated on patroling around.
 

Pearsall

Prodigal Son
Here's a timeline.

As you can see, on Tuesday the focus is on search-and-rescue, as on Wednesday (when it was clear the situation was spiralling out of control), but by Thursday the anarchy had grown to the point where the police was ordered to focus on law and order.
 

dominic

Beast of Burden
DigitalDjigit said:
It just seems like fear mongering to me. I live near Baltimore and 40 minutes from DC (number 2 and 3 respectively on the list of most dangerous US cities) and I haven't been murdered yet though I don't spend much time in either . . . . I still think getting people out of there should be a higher priority than imposing law & order. The number of people shot is dwarfed by the amount killed by thirst, heastroke and lack of medicine.

i lived in dc for about two years in the mid-nineties, and was mugged at gunpoint twice -- and i've never been mugged at any other time in my life -- not that this proves anything! -- merely a personal anecdote

yes, seems to me that the authorities ought to have been able to do both at once -- evacuate people at city center (where they were told to gather, after all) and restore order on the streets -- had they realized the magnitude of the situation soon enough, or had a greater sense of urgency and some kind of contingency plan

obviously the levee breaking caught the authorities flat footed -- and yet presumably certain people have paid jobs to plan for worst case scenarios, yes?
 
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