Sunday Sermonette: Cold Fury

Arthur Silber on why so many people didn't leave New Orleans:

The fact that many people in the world, and many people in America, do not have certain choices available to them is not real to such people. I admit that these events have struck me personally with great force: I myself am very poor, and not in good health. I am well aware that, if and when catastrophe strikes Los Angeles—and unless a friend or acquaintance favors me with his or her generosity—I may well be left to die. To die—in the fires after an earthquake for example, in the violence that will probably follow, in the absence of food and water.

That’s a very important fact to know about your own life, and about the country in which you live.

It is.

Comments

[mudkitty]

In spite of cutbacks, we (Los Angeles) have one of the countries best emergency service sectors in the world, thank goodness.

[Flint]

The elderly... the forgotten victims

First I'd like to say a heart felt hat tip to:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/4/11430/17556#91

I have taken time out from my career to care for my elderly parents. My father is a double amputee diabetic in the final phase of Congestive Heart Failure and my mother was stricken with motor neuron disease last fall.

As I have watched the pictures from NOLA and the convention center I have been perhaps more attuned to seeing the wheel chairs, oxygen concentrators, the dying diabetics, and the elderly on gurneys than most.

I can not tell you how difficult it is in the best of times it is to transfer them to get to doctors and hospitals, much less in a hurricane. It has really destroyed me to hear the stories of men coming up to reporters pleading with them to help rescue their invalid parents, "there half a mile away at a gas station... he's a diabetic and needs insulin."

Even in the best of times the elderly are forgotten at best and preyed upon at worst. I'm sure that NOLA will be awash in their bodies and it breaks my heart.

CNN just aired the clip but cut out all of Aaron Broussard's remarks about FEMA.

Here is a working link for his full remarks as well as Chertoff's interview:

http://dissent.blogspot.com/#112584694461770423

What we know now is:

1. The order to send in the National Guard was not given until 72 hours after the levees had broken.

2. FEMA officials prevented a five mile long convoy of small rescue craft from entering the area. The official that turned them back said that "they would not be needed.

3. FEMA prevented the Red Cross from entering New Orleans to provide food and water because it was feared that it would encourage people to stay in the city.

4. FEMA turned back three trucks full of water that had been sent a week ago by Walmart because they said it would not be needed.

5. FEMA prevented the Coast Guard from giving 1000 gallons of diesel fuel that the Coast Guard was ready to off load to them. This was fuel that was needed for the emergency generators at the cities hospitals.

6. FEMA cut the emergency communication lines for the city's law enforcement and emergency personnel.

All of this goes beyond incompetence; it is criminal negligence that demands criminal action to be taken against those officials who are responsible for this. They are responsible for untold deaths.

[Mandos]

I can sometimes never understand why Silber is a libertarian. Except when I read his posts on Iraq...

[[email protected]]

My brother actually lives in the Big Easy but he got out alive although he's lost everything.

My dad and I celebrated his safety with a glass of scotch apiece and a cigar and of course as Republicans the topic came up - whose to blame, and you know, it sucks to admit it but, you really have to. Bush is an idiot and he f--- this whole thing up.

The reason is simple. Yes the mayor. Yes the disaster plan for NO was not up to scratch. But Bush as President is basically a King when it comes to disaster prevention, and he has huge, huge powers.

The buck stops with Bush.

Bush could have said, this warehouse of bottled water, it's mine. I need 5,000 planes to get those people out of NO. He could have done that. He didn't do any of it, and unlike when he was so great at 9/11 and stood on that rubble with the megaphone, he just flew over the big easy instead. WTF.

Bush has screwed the Republican Party so badly that we're back to where we were after Watergate. And we deserve it because our guy is a f--- moron.

I wonder which political knives are after Bush first...

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Stork, I'm very sorry to hear about what happened to your brother.

[Flint]

Glad to hear that your brother is okay too Stork. I hope it was a good single malt as well.

It is peculiar what happened here isn't it? Given the level of response in Florida:

http://www.sptimes.com/2004/08/17/Weather/Unlike_Andrew__aid_s_.shtml

St. Petersburg Times (excerpt)

Unlike Andrew, aid's right on Charley's heels
By STEVE BOUSQUET, BILL ADAIR and CHASE SQUIRES
Published August 17, 2004

THE FEMA RESPONSE

"Gov. Jeb Bush sought federal help Friday while Charley was still in the Gulf of Mexico. President Bush approved the aid about an hour after the hurricane made landfall.

By Monday afternoon, the cavalry seemed to be in place.

There were a few trouble spots in the stifling heat. Orlando officials want more help, and it wasn't clear if water and ice were getting to everyone who needed it most. But rescue teams, insurance adjusters and National Guard troops are moving quickly into the hardest-hit counties.

Cargo planes were shuttling FEMA supplies from a Georgia Air Force base to a staging area in Lakeland, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had shipped 11 truckloads of water and 14 truckloads of ice. The first assistance checks to victims were to be shipped Monday night."

Maybe it has to be a family affair inorder to get fast help.

[social democrat]

I myself am very poor, and not in good health.

Wow, you don't hear a blogger say that very often.

[gordo]

Flint--

I think the big factors in Florida were that it was a swing state, and it was a presidential election year.

[mudkitty]

Our beautiful city (my beautiful city, even though I never lived there, but wanted to)an ENTIRE CITY...

I think I'm in shock, folks. I really think I'm still going through shock.

[mudkitty]

Has anybody heard anything about Allan Tousaint?

Very glad your bro is ALIVE.

[siriuslek]

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