Stop, These People Have More Money Than You
Everyone’s already seen this, but I just wanted to keep it for the record. I saw it in several places, but this one is from the Guardian on September 3.
At one point Friday, the evacuation was interrupted briefly when school buses rolled up so some 700 guests and employees from the Hyatt Hotel could move to the head of the evacuation line – much to the amazement of those who had been crammed in the stinking Superdome since last Sunday. ‘How does this work? They (are) clean, they are dry, they get out ahead of us?’ exclaimed Howard Blue, 22, who tried to get in their line. The National Guard blocked him as other guardsmen helped the well-dressed guests with their luggage. The 700 had been trapped in the hotel, next to the Superdome, but conditions were considerably cleaner, even without running water, than the unsanitary crush inside the dome.
Impressive, isn’t it.
As is the perpetual cognitive dissonance.
President Bush, in his weekly radio address on Saturday, said: “In America, we do not abandon our fellow citizens in their hour of need.”
Well that’s a funny joke – since the entire world has been watching with its jaw dropped as we in America did exactly that – jumping into the SUV and hightailing it out of New Orleans while the SUVless stayed behind – well and truly abandoned. If we don’t abandon our fellow citizens in their hour of need, what was all that, exactly? An optical illusion?
Those would be the SUVs that meant that people did the following:
1) Evacuated using their own resources, leaving scarce public resources for those who did not have their own;
2) Obeyed the evacuation plan, and the directions of those charged with executing it, ensuring the safety of the people they were personally responsible for and (I bet) others they could fit in;
3) Were able to drive their SUVs through flood waters, onto sidewalks around the stopped hybrids and fallen power lines and actually avoid themselves being the roadblocks.
The self-righteousness of the comfortable?
The Hyatt story is, it seems, all based on one report. I smell a myth. The stories of rapes and murders in the Superdome also look as if they will turn out to be untrue. It was all clearly an awful business but with not much in the way of direct information, journalists do grab at stories. “too good to check” is still, unfortunatley a working rule for some.
We shouldn’t let the fact that it was the Hyatt affect judgement. Radio 4 had an interview on Saturday morning with a British tourist stuck there. Not only was there no running water, the power was out, they were out of food and low on drinking water. They couldn’t get out because the lobby was feet deep in stinking water and they could hear gunshots outside. A typically British delivery, but she sounded pretty desperate.
So not that luxurious really.
Ken, regrettably, the stories of rapes and murders in the Superdome are true. A 14 year old girl was found raped and murdered, and (oh, my) a little boy was found raped to death. His body had been stuffed in a freezer. I’m sorry; I know you were simply cautioning us to keep an eye on the facts.
How do you suppose Kathleen Blanco feels? She assiduously avoided calling in the feds. When presented, finally, with an impatient “legal proposal” (a threat, I guess) that jurisdiction be turned over to federal authorities, she said she would need 24 hours to respond! She played politics with the lives of the very weakest in her care. How can she even live with …never mind. She’s a politician; she’s “a trooper” as her daughter said on TV.
Hizzoner, Ray Nagin, is turning out to be not such a bad guy – early racist remarks notwithstanding. His main complaint is with the State of Louisiana and its Governor. Tapes of old interviews after Ivan show that he at least advised residents of New Orleans that emergency preparedness was a matter of “every man/woman for him/herself” [i.e., there was no plan.] During the crisis, possibly as many as one third of his 1500 man police force disappeared. Two committed suicide! A local cop friend tells me that they make around $12.00/hour, so probably Ray’s offer of 5 days in Las Vegas will draw some of them back to work. I think of the NY firemen who after 100+ hours without a break only asked for one more 8 hour shift to pull their buddies out.
During the crisis, possibly as many as one third of his 1500 man police force disappeared. Two committed suicide! A local cop friend tells me that they make around $12.00/hour, so probably Ray’s offer of 5 days in Las Vegas will draw some of them back to work. – Bill Bradbrooke
It is well known that the New Orleans police department is probably the most corrupt in the nation, so it is no surprise that so many policemen abandoned their posts and disappeared. I would not be at all surprised if some of them were among the looters (and by looters I do not mean people who are only scavenging for food and bottled water).
And no chemical toilets to replace the permanent ones that broke down. And no medical help. And no information.
Hugh Hewitt:
“The Fox News Channel’s Major Garrett was just on my show extending the story he had just reported on Brit Hume’s show: The Red Cross is confirming to Garrett that it had prepositioned water, food, blankets and hygiene products for delivery to the Superdome and the Convention Center in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane, but were blocked from delivering those supplies by orders of the Louisiana state government, which did not want to attract people to the Superdome and/or Convention Center. Garrett has no paper trail yet, but will follow up on his verbal confirmation from sources at the highest levels of the Red Cross.”
It is impressive that the malign incompetence seems to stretch from the very bottom to the very top.
Read this appalling story:
http://www.emsnetwork.org/artman/publish/article_18337.shtml
which seems to tie in with the Hyatt one in that some of the people involved were possibly at the Hyatt.
I’ve posted with other links here:
http://ibanda.blogs.com/panchromatica/2005/09/katrina_more_pe.html
“[SUV ownvers] evacuated using their own resources, leaving scarce public resources for those who did not have their own”
Scarce public resources? Try nonexistent public resources. That’s the whole point of OB’s post: there were no public resources, none whatsoever, so those without means were well and truly fucked.
Karl, there WAS a plan. There WAS a yard containing 200 big buses. It didn’t work and turned into a screw-up. Is there a reason why you on the sidelines should self-righteously line up people who used their own cars to leave and sneer at them?
Is there a reason why you on the sidelines should self-righteously line up people who used their own cars to leave and sneer at them?
– ChrisPer
It seems very obvious to me that the people on this blog are sneering at the ‘every man for himself and devil take the hindmost’ attitudes on ample display by our officials during this disaster. So little thought and so few resources had been put into the evacuation ‘plan’ that one could be forgiven for thinking that ‘those without means’ were considered utterly disposable by those in charge. From the police chief to the Commander in Chief, the handling of the situation has been a national disgrace.
“Is there a reason why you on the sidelines should self-righteously line up people who used their own cars to leave and sneer at them?”
[sarcasm]Uh, yeah, I’m sneering at car owners who fled a coming disaster, chris. Bingo.[/sarcasm]
I’d respond further but Brian already said it so well, so I won’t bother.
And Chris, 200 buses is not a plan. There were 100,000 carless people to evacuate – New Orleans’ own plan says that. Perhaps you’ve never been on a bus? Perhaps you think a ‘big’ bus can carry 1/200th of 100,000 thousand people? That’s not quite right.
Talking about self-interest, the latest news is that the thirty old people died in the nursing home because the staff just upped and left…..