May 03, 2006

Katrina revisited

Sports Illustrated's Peter King on New Orleans, which he visited last week:

I can't help but think that if this were Los Angeles or New York, that 500 percent more money -- and concern -- would have flooded into this place. And I can't help but think that if the idiots who let the levees down here go to seed had simply been doing their jobs, we'd never have been in this mess in the first place -- in New Orleans, at least. Other than former FEMA director Michael Brown, are you telling me that no others are paying for this with their jobs? Whatever happened to responsibility?

Am I ticked off? Damn right I'm ticked off. If you're breathing, you should be morally outraged. Katrina fatigue? Hah! More Katrina news! Give me more! Give it to me every day on the front page! Every day until Washington realizes there's a disaster here every bit as urgent as anything happening in this world today -- fighting terrorism, combating the nuclear threat in Iran. I'm not in any way a political animal, but all you have to be is an occasionally thinking American to be sickened by the conditions I saw.

And guess what? FEMA's closing its office there. Apparently New Orleans (which has a very small tax base at the moment) asked for help funding planners, but never got the cash. FEMA now says:

"It appears the mayor's office misunderstood the commitment made: While FEMA is committed to the long-term recovery of the Gulf Coast region, providing funding for planning does not fall under the federal guidelines of public assistance," Walker said.

You'd think that when a major American city was virtually leveled by a natural disaster the spitting matches over funding would fall by the wayside. In George Bush's government, that's not the case.

Posted by Linkmeister at May 3, 2006 12:01 AM | TrackBack
Comments

Linkmeister, I read through the article. I have thoughts, but I'm not sure I'm going to word them correctly for the purposes of this post. Bear with me.

re: Josh Norman's comments -- "I can't help but think that if this were Los Angeles or New York, that 500 percent more money -- and concern -- would have flooded into this place."

If something of this magnitude were to happen in NYC or LA, it would proceed at the same pace simply because of the size of the area involved. You do not fix 3 broken states overnight, it just can't happen. Even IF the money was sitting in their laps, the manpower (woman power, too) needed far exceeds what can humanly be provided to get it done quickly.

He should ask himself how long it took to rebuild the WTC and then multiply that by a thousand, or ten thousand man-hours.

There are people there working. Lots of people. I personally know at least a dozen people that left here the day of the hurricane and haven't come back for more than Christmas and other functions.

In short, Yes, it is a freakin' mess down there! Throw all the money and caring you want at it, and it still won't get fixed quickly if there aren't enough hands to fix it. Even if you put 100,000 people in there to work on it, where are they going to sleep, eat and poop???? The rebuild has to be progressive, there is no other way to do it.

I do agree somewhat with Whelan when he speaks of the money spent on Iraq and not N.O. Bring the troops home, have them help rebuild. Better still - take advantage of the low-risk prison population from all over the country and bring their hands in to work.

That would be my two-cents on the matter.

Posted by: CNL at May 3, 2006 05:52 AM

I think King was taking advantage of his big megaphone to vent some honest rage. He parachuted in to work on a Habitat project, so he hasn't been there all along to see people like the ones you know who've been there for a long time.

Nonetheless, when we do see pictures of some of those neighborhoods 8 months later and there's still debris everywhere, as though front-end loaders are imaginary machines in Louisiana and Mississippi, it should make us mad and give rise to pointed questions, it seems to me.

Posted by: Linkmeister at May 3, 2006 08:42 AM

I think you're right and I chose not to say anything about how one day of swinging a hammer does not make him a saint by any stretch of the imagination. ;-)

Just going back on the logistics thing - if there *were* front-end loaders... where would they put all the stuff they're loading? You can't burn, bury, or recycle most of it... you see what I'm saying about progessive?

Posted by: CNL at May 3, 2006 01:03 PM