Acts of rioting have been perpetrated, but we’re still determining if it meets the legal definition of riot. 
Why don’t they just close the Houston airport, and house them there? With the many terminals, they could house many more thousands than they could at the Astrodome. There are plenty of kitchens in the restaurants, and bathrooms to provide support. Airplanes and helicopters providing supplies and transportation of refugees are easily accommodated.
If you think I am joking, I assure you, I am not. Closing the airport would be a major pain, to be sure, but it the face of a human disaster of this scale, to not do it is to fail to do everything we can, simply because it would inconvenience the rest of us who were not directly ravaged by the hurricane. I seriously doubt all the official pledges to do “what ever it takes”; when push comes to shove, the spirit of true sacrifice for the sake of others is in very short supply in government.
I don’t knw, but from my readings here, the issue as I see it is that nothing was provided to evacuate people whou couldn’t leave by themselves in their car. I would have assumed that since the possible need of an evacuation was known, something would have been planned well in advance to actually evacuate as much people as possible. Commandeering privates buses, using military vehicles, etc… A plan that would just have to be implemented at the moment the evacuation order was issued.
I suppose you can’t really evacuate 200 000 persons in 24 hours, but what’s baffling for a number of us is that apparently nobody was. I didn’t even notice any mention of transportation being provided for people to the places designated as refuges, like the superdome. (I mean, how could, say, invalid or elderly people go there by themselves?). And it doesn’t seem there were enough of these refuges, anyway.
If a meteor were to hit Las Vegas, I wouldn’t be surprised, but in such a situation, wouldn’t have you expected an evacuation to have been carefully planned and updated at least during the last 50 years? Instead of what, it seems that the “evacuation plan” was : "tell everybody to find on their own some way to leave and some place to stay, or to go to this stadium that can’t even hold 10% of the “let behind”.
Actually, that’s no longer true. Highway 90 from the west across the Crescent City Connection has remained open. I-10 is now open and clear to Baton Rouge. The causeway across Lake Pontchartrain is nearly ready to reopen. The airport is open for humanitarian flights.
There is NO REASON large quantities of basic survival supplies – food, water, maybe even “extras” like soap and toothbrushes – should not be being trucked into NOLA right now. If the authorities haven’t figured out how to deliver it, what the hell point was having “contingency plans” if they didn’t have a worst-case contingency as well as best-case?
You guys can argue all you like about whether it’s a riot or an ugly crowd. My anger is aimed at the so-called authorities whose utter ineptitude has brought about this crisis by virtue of not only doing too little too late, but lying through their teeth – with video footage playing behind them to prove them wrong – about all the alleged “aid” they’re providing. They’re a bunch of lying weasels, and I wish they could be locked in the Superdome with the bad guys in the crowd there for a couple of days and see just what it’s REALLY like.
Actually, I read in the paper today that the US government agreed yesterday to receive the help proposed by foreign countries. Apparently, it doesn’t have stated what is needed yet, though. Which doesn’t surprise me, anyway, since the US rescue efforts themselves seem to be unable to reach/operate in the city, so what would they do exactly with more foreign rescue teams or material?
Actually, they provided free bus transportation to the Superdome (and, if I remember correctly, several other shelter locations) starting Sunday morning for people who couldn’t get out of town.
Why the buses couldn’t have just hit the highway and kept going I still don’t understand, however. There was time.
Personally, I think Stephe96 is a MoveOn.org mole deliberately posing as a Bushbot in an attempt to paint anyone to the right of Nancy Pelosi as a repulsive wanker.
stephe96, our present government is currently failing at its most basic duty - protecting its citizens - on a massive scale. Anybody watching the pitiful petty bureaucratic bitch fights on CNN between FEMA and DHS can read between the lines - everyone knows this is a massive government fuck-up. We’ve had four years since 9/11 to conceive and practice plans for large-scale emergencies, and this is all we can do?
I say this as someone who considers himself as a Republican-leaning moderate:
Maybe if Bush had a little political capital to work with based on a string of policy successes, he’d be given some slack for the government’s (and by logical extension, his) embarrassing and unforgivable inability to address the basic needs of the people of a large American city.
Maybe if he had a tenth of the rhetorical acumen that his predecessors had, he could offer comfort to the rest of us watching our countrymen and women wallow in filth in utter despair.
Maybe if he actually adhered to conservative principles and not signed into law a nearly $300 billion Highway bill that amounts to little more than distributed pork (like the $200 million bridge to an uninhabited island in Alaska) while slashing the funding to the Army Corps of Engineers for levee upkeep, we might be in a more forgiving mood.
But blaming the victims is poor form - as someone a lot smarter than me posted, “Walk a mile in their moccasins.”
There seems to be a fairly long-running tradition between USA and Canada that when one country has some sort of disaster, the other offers whatever help they require. So far neither of us has really needed major resources from the other. It usually comes down to some specialists like sending powerline electricians, firefighters, Red-Cross coordinators and the like.
Wow.
Just, wow.
I hope you’re never in a situation where you need somebody’s help to stay alive.
Scratch, that, I do. So you can see what it’s like. Fucking asshole.
The majority of the people arriving are sick and/or injured to some degree. If they were all crammed into the Dome, things would be much worse, not better. The decision to not bring any more in was based predominantly on the fact that these folks are going to require more care than was expected.
They’ve opened Reliant Stadium, which was our newest waste of tax dollars, to handle the overflow. At least we are getting something positive done with our stadiums.
Sorry to disappoint you, Mama Tiger, but there are no goat-felching morons here. Just folks trying to make the best out of a bad, bad, bad situation.
Clothahump, meet Stephe96; Stephe96, Clothahump.
Listen, I agree with some of your frustration and sentiment, but do you really want an official to publicly admit that they’ve bungled numerous phases of the evacuation and search and rescue???
Do you not think this would lead to more frustration on the part of the refugees (who already think they are getting the shaft) and more violent acts towards officials and innocents??
They (like anyone else who’se never done something like this before) are learning along the way. They make mistakes and try to correct them ASAP. They know they’ve made some wrong moves or not acted quickly enough or not co-ordinated well enough, but they can’t admit that. Not now, anyway, for everyones safety.
Apart from your disgusting morals, you have unacceptably low standards for government.
That “third world” country, Mexico, has no problems at all evacuating people and preparing for disaster in circumstances like these.
… and oh, the irony… those innocent times, long ago…
Welcome to the U.S. of A., now officially joining the ranks of the fourth world countries…
BEFORE it is cleaned up, please.
I think they should throw Stephe96 in there with them, too. Just so he/she can demonstrate how it SHOULD have been done. The people in charge certainly seem to need the help, and since he/she has all the correct answers, I’m sure he/she will be more than happy to help.
Mississauga, 1979, 218,000 evacuees, no deaths. Lots of effort by people to help people, at both individual and government levels. All busses and military vehicles and a great many trucks and cars in the surrounding region getting people out. All schools and auditoriums and thousands upon thousands of homes in the surrounding region opening up for evacuees.
Different circumstances, though.
We’re looking at cultural differences here, to some extent.
There is an assumption - rightly or wrongly - that people in the US are able to fend for themselves in regards to transportation. And over one million people from the New Orleans area did do exactly that.
There was transportation provided for the elderly and infirm - that’s how so many wound up at the Superdome. Which, by the way, was built at considerable extra expense (and much public criticism for its perceived ugliness) to be a shelter of last resort. As it was.
But in between those two extremes you have the poor… and it’s long been a feature in the US that many people are “too proud” to ask for help. They’d rather try to weather a hurricaine in inadequate shelter located below sea level than ask local authorities to transport them. No, it’s not rational. It’s a negative manifestation of a self-reliance ethic. But it accounts for a number of people who remained behind in the danger zone.
And don’t forget - many of the people who remained behind had weathered previous hurricaines in their homes. Based on past experience, they believed they could do so again. Unfortunatley, this storm was worse in its effects, both short and long-term, than others had been in the past.
I think you misstated that accidentally, Uncommon Sense. The phrase you were looking for was “they can’t admit that. Not now, anyway, for their own safety.”
Now hold on. Clothahump has said some stupid things about this situation prior, like shooting everyone with a weapon on sight, but this is a pretty reasonable post. If they’re opening up the new stadium, I think we can all agree that it is indeed better to have these folks in a less crowded situation.
Eh, I think that was more of a dig at Stephe96 than Clothahump.
Sure. You let me know when Mexicans stop sneaking illegally into this country by the 1000s every single day and maybe…maybe I’ll start to believe you.