Katrina

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by Dreammms

that's what i saw too.

if you look at my post you will see i said

Originally Posted by Dreammms
It wasn't food. Shoes and clothing.

all i was stating is what i saw.

i don't fault any of these people. if i was them i would be total nutcase and be very scared. seeing my home destroyed, walking through all that water that has dead bodies and sewage. hearing the cries from my children and seeing my family in need.

Sorry. I misinterpreted your post.

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

Of course not - nice try.

Yes darling. On your part.

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

As of last night they were. Apparently, the gunshots from the people at the dome have the authorities alarmed for their safety - can't say I blame them.

I'm talking about Mississippi as well.

[dissention]

Originally Posted by gldstwmn

So what is it? Are they getting the supplies or not?

Read for yourself:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050901/...ane_katrina_23

Unrest Intensifies at Superdome Shelter

By ADAM NOSSITER, Associated Press Writer 40 minutes ago

NEW ORLEANS - Fights and trash fires broke out at the hot and stinking Superdome and anger and unrest mounted across New Orleans on Thursday, as National Guardsmen in armored vehicles poured in to help restore order across the increasingly lawless and desperate city.

"We are out here like pure animals. We don't have help," the Rev. Issac Clark, 68, said outside the New Orleans Convention Center, where corpses lay in the open and evacuees complained that they were dropped off and given nothing.

An additional 10,000 National Guard troops from across the country were ordered into the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast to shore up security, rescue and relief operations in Katrina's wake as looting, shootings, gunfire, carjackings and other lawlessness spread.

That brought the number of troops dedicated to the effort to more than 28,000, in what may be the biggest military response to a natural disaster in U.S. history.

"The truth is, a terrible tragedy like this brings out the best in most people, brings out the worst in some people," said Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour on NBC's "Today" show. "We're trying to deal with looters as ruthlessly as we can get our hands on them."

The Superdome, where some 25,000 people were being evacuated by bus to the Houston Astrodome, descended into chaos.

Huge crowds, hoping to finally escape the stifling confines of the stadium, jammed the main concourse outside the dome, spilling out over the ramp to the Hyatt hotel next door — a seething sea of tense, unhappy, people packed shoulder-to-shoulder up to the barricades where heavily armed National Guardsmen stood.

Fights broke out. A fire erupted in a trash chute inside the dome, but a National Guard commander said it did not affect the evacuation.

Outside the Convention Center, the sidewalks were packed with people without food, water or medical care, and with no sign of law enforcement. Thousands of storm refugees had been assembling outside for days, waiting for buses that did not come.

At least seven bodies were scattered outside, and hungry, desperate people who were tired of waiting broke through the steel doors to a food service entrance and began pushing out pallets of water and juice and whatever else they could find.

An old man in a chaise lounge lay dead in a grassy median as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered up by a blanket, and another body lay beside her wrapped in a sheet.

"I don't treat my dog like that," 47-year-old Daniel Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair. "I buried my dog." He added: "You can do everything for other countries but you can't do nothing for your own people. You can go overseas with the military but you can't get them down here."

Just above the convention center on Interstate 10, commercial buses were lined up, going nowhere. The street outside the center, above the floodwaters, smelled of urine and feces, and was choked with dirty diapers, old bottles and garbage.

"They've been teasing us with buses for four days," Edwards said.

People chanted, "Help, help!" as reporters and photographers walked through. The crowd got angry when journalists tried to photograph one of the bodies, and covered it over with a blanket. A woman, screaming, went on the front steps of the convention center and led the crowd in reciting the 23rd Psalm.

John Murray, 52, said: "It's like they're punishing us."

The first of hundreds of busloads of people evacuated from the Superdome arrived early Thursday at their new temporary home — another sports arena, the Houston Astrodome, 350 miles away.

But the ambulance service in charge of taking the sick and injured from the Superdome suspended flights after a shot was reported fired at a military helicopter. Richard Zuschlag, chief of Acadian Ambulance, said it had become too dangerous for his pilots.

The military, which was overseeing the removal of the able-bodied by buses, continued the ground evacuation without interruption, said National Guard Lt. Col. Pete Schneider. The government had no immediate confirmation of whether a military helicopter was fired on.

In Texas, the governor's office said Texas has agreed to take in an additional 25,000 refugees from Katrina and plans to house them in San Antonio, though exactly where has not been determined.

In Washington, the White House said
President Bush will tour the devastated Gulf Coast region on Friday and has asked his father, former President George H.W. Bush, and former
President Clinton to lead a private fund-raising campaign for victims.

The president urged a crackdown on the lawlessness.

"I think there ought to be zero tolerance of people breaking the law during an emergency such as this — whether it be looting, or price gouging at the gasoline pump, or taking advantage of charitable giving or insurance fraud," Bush said. "And I've made that clear to our attorney general. The citizens ought to be working together."

On Wednesday, Mayor Ray Nagin offered the most startling estimate yet of the magnitude of the disaster: Asked how many people died in New Orleans, he said: "Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands." The death toll has already reached at least 110 in Mississippi.

If the estimate proves correct, it would make Katrina the worst natural disaster in the United States since at least the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, which was blamed for anywhere from about 500 to 6,000 deaths. Katrina would also be the nation's deadliest hurricane since 1900, when a storm in Galveston, Texas, killed between 6,000 and 12,000 people.

Nagin called for a total evacuation of New Orleans, saying the city had become uninhabitable for the 50,000 to 100,000 who remained behind after the city of nearly a half-million people was ordered cleared out over the weekend, before Katrina blasted the Gulf Coast with 145-mph winds.

The mayor said that it will be two or three months before the city is functioning again and that people would not be allowed back into their homes for at least a month or two.

"We need an effort of 9-11 proportions," former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial, now president of the Urban League, said on NBC's "Today" show. "So many of the people who did not evacuate, could not evacuate for whatever reason. They are people who are African-American mostly but not completely, and people who were of little or limited economic means. They are the folks, we've got to get them out of there."

"A great American city is fighting for its life," he added. "We must rebuild New Orleans, the city that gave us jazz, and music, and multiculturalism."

With New Orleans sinking deeper into desperation, Nagin ordered virtually the entire police force to abandon search-and-rescue efforts Wednesday and stop the increasingly brazen thieves.

"They are starting to get closer to heavily populated areas — hotels, hospitals, and we're going to stop it right now," Nagin said.

In a sign of growing lawlessness, Tenet HealthCare Corp. asked authorities late Wednesday to help evacuate a fully functioning hospital in Gretna after a supply truck carrying food, water and medical supplies was held up at gunpoint.

The floodwaters streamed into the city's streets from two levee breaks near Lake Pontchartrain a day after New Orleans thought it had escaped catastrophic damage from Katrina. The floodwaters covered 80 percent of the city, in some areas 20 feet deep, in a reddish-brown soup of sewage, gasoline and garbage.

The Army Corps of Engineers said it planned to use heavy-duty Chinook helicopters to drop 15,000-pound bags of sand and stone into a 500-foot gap in the failed floodwall.

But the agency said it was having trouble getting the sandbags and dozens of 15-foot highway barriers to the site because the city's waterways were blocked by loose barges, boats and large debris.

Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu toured the stricken areas said said rescued people begged him to pass information to their families. His pocket was full of scraps of paper on which he had scribbled down their phone numbers.

When he got a working phone in the early morning hours Thursday, he contacted a woman whose father had been rescued and told her: "Your daddy's alive, and he said to tell you he loves you."

"She just started crying. She said, `I thought he was dead,'" he said.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by gldstwmn

If we can do it in Afghanistan, we can do it here.

Afganistan did not have the option of any other more efficient delivery.

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

Please demonstrate how that cut in funding directly effected the current situation.

Go find the article I posted. The search function works for you, right?

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by dissention

Read for yourself:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050901/...ane_katrina_23

Unrest Intensifies at Superdome Shelter

Sorry darling. It was a rhetorical question.

[dissention]

Originally Posted by gldstwmn

Sorry darling. It was a rhetorical question.

I know. But it's still a heartbreaking read. That comment about being treated like animals is haunting. I can't believe these people were just dropped off and not given a thing.

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

Afganistan did not have the option of any other more efficient delivery.

At this point neither do we. You did state that the roads were out earlier and that was why they couldn't get there any faster, right?

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by dissention

I know. But it's still a heartbreaking read. That comment about being treated like animals is haunting. I can't believe these people were just dropped off and not given a thing.

I know. I was watching those people at the Convention Center this morning. Horrifying.

[strandinthewind]

[QUOTE=dissention]Read for yourself:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050901/...ane_katrina_23

That article does not address whether the dome was getting supplies. The Convention Center is a mile or two down the road from the dome. I am unsure if it was an official evacuation point prior to the strom as it is adjacent to the river.

What I do not understand is why someone from govt. agency did not have the wherewithall to have like 500 18 wheelers in Dallas ready to come to NOLA or whereever on Monday. Then - set up distribution centers where they could throughout the city. That would have made sense to me.

[dissention]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050901...s_050901160144
Bush on defensive over hurricane response

36 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US

President George W. Bush, already under fire for the
Iraq war, faced new criticism over his response to Hurricane Katrina but pleaded with Americans to keep politics out of the disaster.

Bush cut short a holiday at his Texas ranch to return to Washington on Wednesday to take charge of recovery efforts two days after Katrina walloped the US Gulf Coast, leaving hundreds feared dead.

But critics have accused him of failing to take one of the country's worst national disasters seriously enough at the outset, prompting a strong riposte from the president Thursday.

"I hope people don't play politics during this period of time," Bush said in an unscheduled early morning interview on ABC television. "This is a natural disaster, the likes of which our country may have never seen before.

"And it is a national emergency. And what we need to do as a nation is come together to solve the problem and not play politics. There will be ample time for politics," he said.

The New York Times, in a scathing editorial titled "Waiting for a Leader," dismissed his remarks of consolation and support on Wednesday as "one of the worst speeches of his life."

"In what seems to be a ritual in this administration the president appeared a day later than was needed," the Times said.

"And nothing about the president's demeanor yesterday -- which seemed casual to the point of carelessness -- suggested he understood the depth of the current crisis."

USA Today was also harshly critical of early coordination problems in the rescue and recovery effort, and scored the White House for "what appeared to be a halting response" on Tuesday.

"The president has mobilized a massive response," the paper said. "Even so, the feeling lingers that for the victims of Katrina in most imminent peril, help might be arriving too late."

It was not the first time Bush, who campaigned for re-election last year as a tough and decisive "war president," has been criticized for a tardy response to catastrophe.

He took a lot of heat after a tsunami devastated several Asian countries in December, killing more than 200,000 people. His response in the hours after the September 11, 2001 attacks also drew some rebukes.

The criticism over Katrina came at a bad time for Bush, with his popularity ratings sinking to around 45 percent, the lowest level of his presidency, and less than four in 10 Americans approving of his handling of Iraq.

But Bush insisted Thursday he reacted swiftly to Hurricane Katrina once the magnitude of the calamity became apparent to him as he was winding up a five-week vacation at his ranch.

The Texas Republican told ABC that he started to organize federal relief efforts on Tuesday and gave specific instructions to his administration to get in gear.

He said he told aides, "Look, when I get back to Washington on Wednesday afternoon I want to have a report on my desk and a cabinet meeting for you to tell me exactly what your departments are going to do."

Bush flew over the stricken areas en route to the US capital. The White House had said he would likely made an inspection trip on Friday or Saturday but the president was vague, saying he would go as soon as he could.

"Obviously, if a president were to land it would take a lot of resources away from the immediate task. But we have people on the ground now working with local authorities to determine what would be the best time for me to go," he said.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by gldstwmn

At this point neither do we. You did state that the roads were out earlier and that was why they couldn't get there any faster, right?

They are getting to the towns, but is a slow task. Again, if they drop a container in the middle of a marsh - no one gets it In any event, they are getting to these people and moreso every hour.

[gldstwmn]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/01/op...tml?oref=login

Waiting for a Leader

Published: September 1, 2005
George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday, especially given the level of national distress and the need for words of consolation and wisdom. In what seems to be a ritual in this administration, the president appeared a day later than he was needed. He then read an address of a quality more appropriate for an Arbor Day celebration: a long laundry list of pounds of ice, generators and blankets delivered to the stricken Gulf Coast. He advised the public that anybody who wanted to help should send cash, grinned, and promised that everything would work out in the end.

We will, of course, endure, and the city of New Orleans must come back. But looking at the pictures on television yesterday of a place abandoned to the forces of flood, fire and looting, it was hard not to wonder exactly how that is going to come to pass. Right now, hundreds of thousands of American refugees need our national concern and care. Thousands of people still need to be rescued from imminent peril. Public health threats must be controlled in New Orleans and throughout southern Mississippi. Drivers must be given confidence that gasoline will be available, and profiteering must be brought under control at a moment when television has been showing long lines at some pumps and spot prices approaching $4 a gallon have been reported.

Sacrifices may be necessary to make sure that all these things happen in an orderly, efficient way. But this administration has never been one to counsel sacrifice. And nothing about the president's demeanor yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of carelessness - suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis.

While our attention must now be on the Gulf Coast's most immediate needs, the nation will soon ask why New Orleans's levees remained so inadequate. Publications from the local newspaper to National Geographic have fulminated about the bad state of flood protection in this beloved city, which is below sea level. Why were developers permitted to destroy wetlands and barrier islands that could have held back the hurricane's surge? Why was Congress, before it wandered off to vacation, engaged in slashing the budget for correcting some of the gaping holes in the area's flood protection?

It would be some comfort to think that, as Mr. Bush cheerily announced, America "will be a stronger place" for enduring this crisis. Complacency will no longer suffice, especially if experts are right in warning that global warming may increase the intensity of future hurricanes. But since this administration won't acknowledge that global warming exists, the chances of leadership seem minimal.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by gldstwmn

Go find the article I posted. The search function works for you, right?

It explained nothing and you know it. Nice try though.

I mean do you really think they could have rebuilt all the levees in six months - come on. Moreover, this has been going on for decades - a concept you do not want to admit.