Katrina Damage
- Thread starter BillyBob
- Start date
Morpheus
New member
The basis of the racial argument is that if a similar widespread disaster occurred, let's say, a major earthquake in manhatten, search and rescue teams would have decended on the town within hours, not days. As it is, my kids were watching one of those entertainment "news" shows last night and I was caught by a story about how shortly after the hurricane NYPD officers were helicoptered in to the New Orleans Museum of Art to protect the millions of dollars of works housed there from looters. An honorable task except when you consider that during this same period we were told that shelters housing humans couldn't be secured. The art was saved, but the humans were raped, shot, stabbed, terrorized, starved and dehydrated. I guess the logic must be that humans can be replaced, but those art works are valuable.BillyBob said:
Gaviidae
New member
Morpheus said:
As it seemed with the entire operation it all depended on information. Obviously, someone was pushing to rescue the art because they knew the art was there and in danger. No one on the outside knew the condition of the shelters or the problem within.
As far as comparing it to Manhatten, NYC cops, NYC firefighters, and NYC politicians took charge and were responsible for the response to 9/11. In New Orleans it seems that they felt no similar need to help themselves.
Morpheus said:
:think: So there's an directly proportional relationship between the percentage of people in a disaster that are white and the efficiency and speediness of the response?
So, the response to a disaster in Manhattan burough(54% white) would be half-*** ed, the result in New Orleans(28% white) was quarter-*** ed and the response to a disaster in Deerborn, Michigan(90% white) would be nearly whole-*** ed?
I'm not sure which Katrina thread this should go in, so I'll put it here. I hate to defend public officials of any sort, but I must offer this defense of state/local officials against the attack that they should have forced evacuation of New Orleans prior to the storm. Two facts need to be taken into consideration:
1. Gulf hurricanes tend to take a sharp turn to the east prior to landfall. Katrina, in fact, did this. Had it not been as unusually large as it was, New Orleans would have been largely spared major damage.
2. A forced evacuation is very expensive, and an unnecessary forced evacuation would have been politically suicidal.
A parish (county) official earlier this year called for a voluntary evacuation of his parish for a hurricane that ended up missing the area. He was crucified in the local media for this "lapse in judgement" and the Governor herself publicly reprimanded him for the action.
Local officials were very stern and consistent in their warnings to get out. A forced evacuation would have been nearly impossible to execute, extremely expensive and potentially deadly had it proved unnecessary. In hindsight, they should have tried it, but I can understand why they made the decisions that they did. Several improvements had been made to previous evacuation plans, and by and large, the evacuation worked quite well, especially given the relatively short warning period.
1. Gulf hurricanes tend to take a sharp turn to the east prior to landfall. Katrina, in fact, did this. Had it not been as unusually large as it was, New Orleans would have been largely spared major damage.
2. A forced evacuation is very expensive, and an unnecessary forced evacuation would have been politically suicidal.
A parish (county) official earlier this year called for a voluntary evacuation of his parish for a hurricane that ended up missing the area. He was crucified in the local media for this "lapse in judgement" and the Governor herself publicly reprimanded him for the action.
Local officials were very stern and consistent in their warnings to get out. A forced evacuation would have been nearly impossible to execute, extremely expensive and potentially deadly had it proved unnecessary. In hindsight, they should have tried it, but I can understand why they made the decisions that they did. Several improvements had been made to previous evacuation plans, and by and large, the evacuation worked quite well, especially given the relatively short warning period.
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PureX
Well-known member
No one on the outside knew the condition of the art, either. All they knew was that it was there, and that it was in danger. But being that it was worth so much money, someone sent in a special police force to protect it. We also knew that people were trapped in those shelters, and that they were in danger, too, but no special force was sent into the shelters to protect them - and that's because the people in them were not worth millions of dollars. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand this.Gaviidae said:
Gaviidae
New member
docrob57 said:
Well said, docrob. It's a no win situation which is easy to see and judge in hindsight. Washington state's governor in 1980 made the call to not require a mandatory evacuation of Mt. St. Helens. She's still blamed for some of the deaths. On the other hand, with the recent eruption people were all upset that they closed the top of the mountain off and were getting as close as they could and pushing for it to reopen sooner than was safe.
The problem I have is that the mayor, after being to slow to start evacuations understandably as you say, attacks the federal government for being just as slow as he was. If he, who is living there, underreacts why is it wrong for the feds to do the same. Not that FEMA's reaction was good but if you're going to attack someone else you ought to make sure your own response was above par.
One other thing you left off was that the Superdome was supposed to hold up to 200 mph winds. If it had held up like it was supposed to the situation there wouldn't have been nearly as nasty.
Morpheus
New member
You will note upon review that I wasn't comparing Katrina response to the WTC, I was comparing it to a hypothetical, (yet geologically feasable), major earthquake in Manhatten. Larger scale. The local response would likewise be severely hampered by the event itself. The major difference would be economic. I could have just as easily used areas including Beverly Hills, the Hamptons or Kennebunkport, MN. After most major hurricanes nationally dispatched first responders begin to arrive on site within 24 hours.Gaviidae said:
Gaviidae said:
I agree about the attacks. I think all of the attacks are very foolish and self serving. I think that we have become a people that can't admit that we sometimes encoounter situations which we aren't prepared to deal with. A little humility here on the part of all involved parties would go a long way,
I am particularly irritated of late with people like Sean Hannity who state quite clearly what the Mayor of New Orleans should have done. This would have been much more compelling had he made these arguments before the hurricane.
Morpheus
New member
Side note: I, like many, don't think that race was the major factor. I do believe that economic status was. If those were all investment bankers and corporate executives trapped there I am sure that we wouldn't have watched days of news coverage of them slowly dehydrating while troops drove by sitting on armored vehicles with automatic weapons yelling at them with bullhorns to wait.