The Aftermath. God be with Katrina's victims... and survivors.

[mary]

Apparently, Avery Johnson has not heard from his two sisters that live in the area - at least that is what I think I heard on the Ticket this morning as I was awakening to my alarm. I hope he, along with everyone else, finds their loved ones as soon as possible.

I saw some of the most heartbreaking coverage last night. A woman was getting on a bus with her child to be evacuated. She put the child on the bus (he was toddler age) and then tried to get on, but got pushed off.

So the bus takes off...and there goes her baby (I presume it was an evacuation bus to Houston, but I'm unsure)

She spent all day just trying to find someone to help her. Finally a cop help put her on a bus to send her to Houston so she could try to find her child.

It was absolutely gut wrenching.

[Big Boy Laroux]

wow, mary, that is a horrible story...

what are these people thinking? yesy, you need help, so accept the help, don't go shooting at helicopters! that is beyond bizarre.

[capitalcity]

Mayor Ray Nagin is a joke.

the blame game begins

[MavKikiNYC]

Is Nagin proposing dropping Greyhound buses in by helicopter?

I think the pressure is getting to him, and I'm sympathetic......to a degree.

But the first-line political failures are his as much as anybody's, and his attempt to pass off his own hysteria as leadership is pathetic. He'd be of more use just shutting up and bailing water.

He's certainly no Giuliani.

[LRB]

Originally posted by: FilthyFinMavs
You have idiots shooting down helicopters that are there to help them. I'd also like to know what the hell is going on. The victims of this hurricane can't be the ones resisting help.

I couldn't understand this either. But my wife mentioned last night that there are probably lots of mentally ill people who due to the disaster are no longer able to obtain the medicine that allows them to function normally in society. It could very well be some of these people who are doing the shooing at helicopters and relief workers.

[FilthyFinMavs]

Yea I talked to a couple of family members about this whole tragedy and they brought up that some of the people takin' the helicopters down are people who have just had enough. The people left have to be all the ones who were in poverty in the first place while the "rich" people have fledded and have gone about their business so some are looking at this situation with a "I don't give a F" attitude. I don't know what's going on the minds of some of these people but they've got to let the people who want to get out have a chance at doing so.

[LRB]

I think with the number of people's lives and stake and the time critical nature of getting aid to people and/or evacuating them in order to save lives, that we're going to have to seen the military in and take these people out who are shooting at rescue workers. It's extremely sad, but it's either a few of their lives or a great many innocent lives. I can understand frustation, but that doesn't give you the right to kill innocent people over it. And most of the people in danger are the poor, not the rich and powerful.

[capitalcity]

WWL transcript

WWL: Do you believe that the president is seeing this, holding a news conference on it but can't do anything until [Louisiana Gov.] Kathleen Blanco requested him to do it? And do you know whether or not she has made that request?

NAGIN: I have no idea what they're doing. But I will tell you this: You know, God is looking down on all this, and if they are not doing everything in their power to save people, they are going to pay the price. Because every day that we delay, people are dying and they're dying by the hundreds, I'm willing to bet you. We're getting reports and calls that are breaking my heart, from people saying, "I've been in my attic. I can't take it anymore. The water is up to my neck. I don't think I can hold out." And that's happening as we speak. You know what really upsets me, Garland? We told everybody the importance of the 17th Street Canal issue. We said, "Please, please take care of this. We don't care what you do. Figure it out."

WWL: Who'd you say that to?

NAGIN: Everybody: the governor, Homeland Security, FEMA. You name it, we said it. And they allowed that pumping station next to Pumping Station 6 to go under water. Our sewage and water board people ... stayed there and endangered their lives. And what happened when that pumping station went down, the water started flowing again in the city, and it starting getting to levels that probably killed more people. In addition to that, we had water flowing through the pipes in the city. That's a power station over there. So there's no water flowing anywhere on the east bank of Orleans Parish. So our critical water supply was destroyed because of lack of action.

WWL: Why couldn't they drop the 3,000-pound sandbags or the containers that they were talking about earlier? Was it an engineering feat that just couldn't be done?

NAGIN: They said it was some pulleys that they had to manufacture. But, you know, in a state of emergency, man, you are creative, you figure out ways to get stuff done. Then they told me that they went overnight, and they built 17 concrete structures and they had the pulleys on them and they were going to drop them. I flew over that thing yesterday, and it's in the same shape that it was after the storm hit. There is nothing happening. And they're feeding the public a line of bull and they're spinning, and people are dying down here.

Why don't you try growing a pair buddy.

[southern_sweets]

I am disgusted by what I am reading! I have bit my tounge for a long time as this turned into a republican convention around here. I valued the right each of you have to your opinions, but when you continue to try to twist the truth to find any way to excuse what has happened over the last few days I can be silent no more.

Do any of you actually use your own eyes and ears and think for yourselves?! The president went golfing as thousands of people died. He lied about his knowledge of the levy danger. He waited days to send relief and, as a result, many people died...most of them elderly and poor.

As long as Bush continues to say he's a Christian, many will support him regardless. It seems to me that people are confusing George W with Jesus and he is definately not Jesus! WWJD? Probably not go golfing!

I guess since none of you have called New Orleans home or have family and friends there you don't care. What has happened is a disgrace I could have never imagined before this week.

I am proud of Mayor Nagin. He is speaking for the people of New Orleans and calling loudly for the help the people of his city need. I hope he speaks louder, curses more, and continues to fight for people the rest of nation and George Bush left to die.

If you support a president that puts his own recreation above the needs of the elederly and the poor in times of disaster I am ashamed to know you![img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-mad.gif[/img]

God Bless the city of New Orleans, the people, the history, the culture and all it means to so many of us.

[MavKikiNYC]

Sad but all-too-common to misdirect frustrations about something against which one has no control and cannot respond (a hurricane) toward something or someone (politicians and the President of the United States) against whom one has some vaguely-defined animosity.

I have family in the area, and know plenty of other people who have connections to the area and/or who are from there, and they do NOT blame President Bush for failing to ward off the hurricane.

I look at the interviews with the local officials in New Orleans (the mayor, the police chief) and clearly they are under enormous strain under amost unthinkably difficult circumstances, and I can be sympathetic. But they are also clearly cracking under the strain, and look like they are on the verge of a breakdown. Some of their comments made out of frustration and emotion are clearly inappropriate and misdirected.

[Thespiralgoeson]

Originally posted by: southern_sweets
As long as Bush continues to say he's a Christian, many will support him regardless. It seems to me that people are confusing George W with Jesus and he is definately not Jesus! WWJD? Probably not go golfing!

I'm not a Christian, and I support Bush. I don't give a rat's ass if he's Christian or not, but I believe he's done as good a job as anyone would've done since he's been President, considering the circumstances. I'm not a Christian, I don't give a f*ck who is, and I voted for him. I'm sure some people confuse Bush with Jesus, but they probably number about the same as the people who thought David Koresh or Jim Jones was Jesus. For you to generalize like that is downright offensive, and so's your sig. And the "golfing" comment is just another example of the idiotic, vicious, hateful way people regard Bush. Really, very very immature. I hated Bill Clinton. I still hate Bill Clinton. I hate his wife too. But when he was President, I never pulled sh*t like that, or made moronic generalizations like you just did. I never put some stupid f*cking bumper sticker on my car, like one with his picture next to the words "NOT MY PRESIDENT" or "AMERICAN TERRORIST." Nor will I do any such thing if Hillary is elected. How hypocritcal of you to make some stupid comment about how we all blindly support Bush because he says he's Christian, and while at the same time chastizing us for supporting him in the first place. Shame on you.

[southern_sweets]

The truth is Bush lied!

He said there was no way of knowing the levies would break. Give me a break! That information and the president's knowledge of it is clearly documented. Also, he stated that the governor did not formally request aid. Bull! Her four page document was read to the public today.

Be a Bush homer if you must, but I see him for what he is and know the truth about how he caused the deaths of thousands. Of course, to some of you those people are not worth saving. Way to go "pro-lifers." Maybe Bush would have responded quicker if we had told him there was a woman in a permanent vegatative state that was going to have her feeding tube removed. This disaster has exposed the radical right for what they truly are, including many of the poster here.

As for the charecter of the Bush supporters here, not one has asked about my family and friends or offered one word of sympathy for what has happened to my home town. You are all so kind! If it was your family in that filth waiting in vain for George to finish his golf game you might feel differently.

You have all been duped and you refuse to see it. So please donate your cash, votes, and children to the cause of the Bush family's further politacal and economic domination. However, I join the majority of Americans that say enough is enough!

And no, SHAME ON YOU!

[southern_sweets]

Originally posted by: MavKikiNYC
I have family in the area, and know plenty of other people who have connections to the area and/or who are from there, and they do NOT blame President Bush for failing to ward off the hurricane.

Are they at the Superdome or waiting on I-10 for days?

[raefformvp]

This whole thing became very real to me today. We had three students enroll at Lamar this week from Louisiana and we have been told more are on the way. I got one of the girls in my sophomore English class. She is cute as can be! From what I understand her mom worked in New Orleans. The company has relocated to Arlington. She said her house is completly under water and they have lost most of their possessions. She was telling me that she has never been the "new kid" and that she has attended school with the same people all of her life. As she is telling me this story, she starts crying. I'm an emotional person, especially when it comes to my students. I can't stand to see them hurting, so I started crying as well. This is the first person I have met who is directly related to the effects of Katrina. I feel so helpless and insignificant over the entire situation. I got mad at myself several times today for letting stupid stuff bother me like the heat. I hate the heat. My hair doesn't do well in heat. It tends to frizz. Who cares?! At least I have supplies here to do my hair, and clothes to wear, and a car to drive, and food to eat, and my two cats safe and sound (my student lost her cat!), and a job to go to, and electricity so I can get on the computer. We take so many things for granted!

I love God and I believe that he is in control of ALL things. Jeremiah 29:11 is one of my favorite verses in the Bible. God has a plan for us, to give us hope and to prosper. I hate that things like this make me doubt God's faithfulness, but it is just so hard to see the suffering going on so close to home. I guess I won't understand until I get to Heaven the reason God allows such suffering. So I guess for now, I will just support my new student and let her know that I care and am available for support. I will try to give as much money and as many supplies as I can to the relief organizations. And I will continue to pray that God will help the people in the states affected to rebuild and move on. I just don't know what more I can do...

[Thespiralgoeson]

Originally posted by: southern_sweets
As for the charecter of the Bush supporters here, not one has asked about my family and friends or offered one word of sympathy for what has happened to my home town.

Really? The character of the Bush supporters here? We don't care about what's happened? Well let's see. I'm know I'm a Bush supporter...

Orginally posted by: Thespiralgoeson
I just spent the week in Miami and just got a small taste of this monster. It was coming at us, so we went down to Key West to avoid it and wouldn't you know, it f*cking followed us there... Went back to Miami and saw some of the damage, trees knocked down, street lights bent over etc... But man, now this thing is unbelievable. Thoughts and prayers to the folks in Louisiana and Mississippi.

I'm pretty sure Doc is a Bush supporter (correct me if I'm wrong, Doc)

Originally posted by: Drbio
The real issue now isn't the damage or maybe even getting people out, but the inevitable medical crisis that is probably a day or so away. People will start looting food and that food will not have been kept cool. We will see salmonella and other similar illnesses almost immediately. Also, the water contains every chemical imaginable, raw sewage from the pipes and overflowed plants, gas, and every other thing that you can think of. People will die from exposure to these things within weeks. Illness could potentially claim as many people as the storm itself which by initial accounts is in the hundreds. I'll be surprised if there are less than a dozen murders over food riots. Believe it or not that is very typical in situations such as these. I'll also be surprised if we don't lose 50 people to medical ailments such as heart attack etc that could have otherwise been spared.

God bless those poor people.

Orginally posted by: Drbio
I want to caution everyone about getting pissed off at looters so fast....having been in the emergency response field I will tell from a ton of experience that people are desperate to feed children and their families. It's hard to condemn a man for stealing baby food and diapers when his child is crying from starvation and covered in feces. It's the moron stealing VCR's and TV's in the TV shop that I wish we could beat down.

Seriously though...these people are desperate for food and water and will start doing things that many of us will not be able to understand. Many of the soldiers, emergency responders and law enforcement personnel are fortunately educated about this type of response. However, with a tragedy this big, theft etc will be widespread and rampant.

God bless those poor poor people

Go back through the thread again, cuz the Doc didn't start there. There was plenty of more sympathy, well wishing etc... after that from a few people, and I'd be willing to bet that more than one of them voted for Bush. Yeah, us Bush supporters... real cold-hearted, callused bastards... We don't give a shit about what's going on... We just want to play golf during major crises and exploit those less fortunate than ourselves with all that fat money we took out of the working man's pocket via Bush-tax cuts...

You are all so kind! If it was your family in that filth waiting in vain for George to finish his golf game you might feel differently.

Actually, I have quite a bit of family right in New Orleans, whom I actually haven't heard from since Katrina hit. I only hope and pray that everyone there, including your family is safe and well.

[Thespiralgoeson]

Originally posted by: southern_sweets
The truth is Bush lied!

He said there was no way of knowing the levies would break. Give me a break! That information and the president's knowledge of it is clearly documented.

Actually, if you're gonna blame Bush for this, you might also wanna blame Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr., and Clinton, because we've known ever since Camille hit that Louisianna would'nt be able to endure a category 5 hurricane without exactly this happening. The US government knew this could happen at anytime, and did nothing. Not fair to single out Dubya.

[Drbio]

Sorry sweets, but you have gone off the deep end on this one. Trying to blame Bush for this is shortsighted and so misdirected it's sickening. And to insinuate that none of us care about yours or others families is most disappointing.

[MavKikiNYC]

Originally posted by: southern_sweets

Are they at the Superdome or waiting on I-10 for days?

No, they wouldn't be. (In fact, at least one relative is participating in the relief effort in Baton Rouge.)

Are yours?

Either way, what's your point? Don't have one? Didn't think so.

As for the charecter of the Bush supporters here, not one has asked about my family and friends or offered one word of sympathy for what has happened to my home town. You are all so kind! If it was your family in that filth waiting in vain for George to finish his golf game you might feel differently.

This part of your diatribe is particularly galling. That people here haven't personally contacted you to ask about YOUR friends and family? As if we aren't ALL worried about our OWN friends, family and acquaintances down there?

The magnitude of your self-absorption is amazing.

[twelli]

I think, it's time to move this thread to the politcal forum...

[twelli]

or keep it clean from political comments...

[chumdawg]

Sweets, first let me say that I certainly hope your family and friends are safe and will continue to be safe. And I'm sure that everyone here shares this sentiment. I'm poignantly aware that any person not in the same situation simply could not appreciate exactly how it must feel. I wish you strength.

Touching story, Raef. God bless that girl and her family. I got my first in-person taste of the real-life human element the last couple days, too. I talked to a lady today who left her home in Metairie early Monday morning and drove straight to Dallas. She used to teach at an elementary school in east New Orleans. She thinks her school is probably gone. She has two sisters who stayed behind. For the moment they are both safe, as best she can tell. They are staying in a hotel on Bourbon Street, where they both work(ed). They have a generator, and they have adequate food and water. But they can't venture outside past six o'clock. Why, I asked? Because the troopers may shoot you if you do. That seemed so unbelievable to me, but after these past couple days I'm not sure there's much I wouldn't believe.

What gripped me most about this woman--other than the fact that she was a thousand miles from home, and maybe a thousand miles from a place that used to be home but never will be again--was when she told me about her husband's mother. She lives in New Orleans proper. She decided to stay, along with an old friend. The lady hasn't heard from her since Sunday.

Her voice cracked a little as she told me that. I looked at her, and I looked at her husband, and it struck me so severely that these people may have already suffered one of the greatest losses a person will suffer, and they don't know it yet. But they know that they simply may not know it yet--and that's got to be the toughest part of all. I can't begin to imagine how it must eat at them, the not knowing. This whole damn this is so surreal.

I, too, am bothered by what I've seen and read. I'm entirely aware that I don't have all the information, that I'm viewing all this through the lens of the media. Any impressions I have may be completely off base. But the impressions I have aren't good.

My impression is that more could be done for the people who are trapped there. My impression is that our nation's resources are not being deployed to the extent that they could be. Again, this is my impression, and it may not mesh with reality. But I have the idea that the world's greatest superpower ought to be able to keep people from dying over there.

I hear about helicopters air-dropping food and water in there, and I think: yeah, that's right, that's the way it ought to be. But my impression is that they aren't dropping enough, that they should be delivering more. I have to say, I'm entirely with the New Orleans mayor on this one. I just don't get the sense that our nation is "dropping everything" to help those people.

And I know that people are willing. I know that the great, great majority of Americans value human life--or at least American life, to put it bluntly--above all else and are prepared to make great sacrifices to save it. I sense that there is a willingness that is not being met by resources.

I don't give one moment of thought to whether the crisis could have been prevented. That's immaterial to me. I understand why certain measures that perhaps could have been taken were not taken. I only worry about the response. That's all that concerns me.

And as I said, I have the impression that the response is not commensurate with the need. I desperately hope that my impression is wrong.

[mary]

My impression is that more could be done for the people who are trapped there. My impression is that our nation's resources are not being deployed to the extent that they could be. Again, this is my impression, and it may not mesh with reality. But I have the idea that the world's greatest superpower ought to be able to keep people from dying over there.

I have to wonder why it took the National Guard 4 days to start dropping supplies. Unfortunately, we might've placed the value of paperwork over human lives. Its certainly easier to believe Mayor Nagin is an idiot, than to believe our government is stalling because its being weighed down by its own bureaucratic process.

But I don't think Mayor Nagin is an idiot. He may have "lost it" emotionally when talking to the media and be incredibly frustrated, but I don't think he's an idiot. I think anybody that thinks we've done a good or even decent job of handling this disaster isn't really paying attention.

To be fair, when the Blame Game starts, I think there will be plenty to go around - and will probably start (but not end) at the local level. What was the evacuation plan again?

And I certainly hope this thread doesn't get moved to the political forum, because that means I likely would not visit it anymore.

Sweets, Mavskiki, and any others that have family New Orleans - your family and friends are in my prayers.

[MavKikiNYC]

Quote
My impression is that more could be done for the people who are trapped there. My impression is that our nation's resources are not being deployed to the extent that they could be. Again, this is my impression, and it may not mesh with reality. But I have the idea that the world's greatest superpower ought to be able to keep people from dying over there.

I have to wonder why it took the National Guard 4 days to start dropping supplies.

I think these are very reasonable observations, very reasonable questions to have about the rescue efforts. Why couldn't evacuation be started on Tuesday or Wednesday? What were the impediments to moving in sufficient National Guard forces to secure the area? Was it availability? Was it preparedness? Was it logistical? Was it bureaucratic? And if there are facts that reasonably explain the delay without assigning blame, is the public prepared to accept the explanation? Or will they go on and try to assign blame?

Why did it take until Friday to begin getting significant amounts of relief to the people stranded? What was the scale of relief distribution prior to Friday? Who was responsible for organizing and managaing it?

With respect to supply drops, Mary....I've heard and read countless suggestions that the military could have simply dropped relief supplies into the area and that the people on the ground would have simply managed the distribution on their own. Last night though, I heard a (relatively) able-bodied woman at the convention center who was stranded there with her sick and dying mother who pointed out that she and her mother didn't get water when the supplies were dropped because they couldn't fight (her word) with the other people who were out there waiting for whatever relief came.

You're right, though, with respect to the "Blame Game". I think that there are a number of very hard, very pointed, very difficult observations that can be made about the situation--with respect not only to the municipal, state, and federal responses, but with respect to the expectations of society in general, with respect to the coverage by the media, with respect to the actions of some of the survivors, with respect to the decisions made by people who could have evacuated but didn't. Right now probably isn't the time though to cut too deeply into fresh wounds.

I will say this though: While we all may be moved to tears on a daily basis looking at the images coming out of N.O., much of the most hysterical criticism of the relief efforts seems to emanate from the perspective (spun into a demagogic froth by politicos, and distributed for public consumption by a disaster-hungry media) that the US is the world's foremost superpower, and that therefore the government should be able to mitigate a natural disaster of the magnitude of Katrina (if not prevent it altogether) without too much inconvenience, without any pain, and without loss of life.

This is, of course, a totally arrogant, self-deluding, unrealistic notion of self-importance; that We are the chosen people, and that We are therefore somehow either immune to disaster, or that We can somehow take steps to immunize ourselves from the type of disaster that occured in Thailand. And that if it happens, someone is to blame.

(As I write this I listen to the Most Ignorant Anti-Reverend and Camera Hungry Jesse Jackson entoning how "... these people are not "refurgeeze", they are American citizens..." as if Americans are not subject to natural disaster. To the hypocritical fraud Jesse Jackson, and those of his ilk who are doing their dead-level best to spin this into a racial issue, and exploit the tragedy for THEIR OWN PERSONAL AND POLITICAL GAIN, I say "Fuck to hell off.")

People need to be led to understand that Katrina was a natural disaster, on a huge scale; and that in the context of New Orleans, loss of property, loss of homes, loss of life, and displacement of people was an inevitability. When everything is accounted for, we may or may not consider ourselves so fortunate.

[Ninkobei]

saw this posted in a different newsgroup:

Link

Patients put down

September 12, 2005

DOCTORS working in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans killed critically ill patients rather than leave them to die in agony as they evacuated.

With gangs of rapists and looters rampaging through wards in the flooded city, senior doctors took the harrowing decision to give massive overdoses of morphine to those they believed could not make it out alive.

One New Orleans doctor told how she "prayed for God to have mercy on her soul" after she ignored every tenet of medical ethics and ended the lives of patients she had earlier fought to save.

Her heart-rending account has been corroborated by a hospital orderly and by local government officials.

One emergency official, William Forest McQueen, said: "Those who had no chance of making it were given a lot of morphine and lain down in a dark place to die."

Euthanasia is illegal in Louisiana and the doctors spoke only on condition on anonymity.

Their families believe their confessions are an indictment of the appalling failure of US authorities to help those in desperate need after Hurricane Katrina flooded the city, claiming thousands of lives and making 500,000 homeless.

"I didn't know if I was doing the right thing," the doctor said.

"But I did not have time. I had to make snap decisions, under the most appalling circumstances, and I did what I thought was right.

"I injected morphine into those patients who were dying and in agony.

"If the first dose was not enough, I gave a double dose.

"And at night I prayed to God to have mercy on my soul."

The doctor, who finally fled her hospital late last week in fear of being murdered by the armed looters, denied her actions were murder.

"This was not murder, this was compassion. They would have been dead within hours, if not days," she said.

"What we did was give comfort to the end. I had cancer patients who were in agony. In some cases the drugs may have speeded up the death process.

"We divided the hospital's patients into three categories: Those who were traumatised but medically fit enough to survive, those who needed urgent care, and the dying.

"People would find it impossible to understand the situation.

"I had to make life-or-death decisions in a split second.

"It came down to giving people the basic human right to die with dignity.

"There were patients with 'do not resuscitate' signs. Under normal circumstances some could have lasted several days. But when the power went out, we had nothing.

"Some of the very sick became distressed. We tried to make them as comfortable as possible.

"The pharmacy was under lockdown because gangs of armed looters were roaming around looking for their fix.

"You have to understand these people were going to die anyway."

Mr McQueen, a utility manager for the town of Abita Springs, half an hour north of New Orleans, told relatives that patients had been "put down", saying: "They injected them, but nurses stayed with them until they died."

Mr McQueen, who worked closely with emergency teams, added: "They had to make unbearable decisions."