Mayor Nola rants!
Out of context: Reply #157
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Interesting perspective.
Bryan S. Under
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Watching the news this morning, I’m listening to Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland) from the Black Congressional Caucus venting before press cameras. He’s quoting scripture and castigating the president for the response to this emergency.
I keep biting my tongue here, because I really don’t want to sound callous, but these people need to really shut their mouths. It’s so nice of our congressional leaders and other politicians who are far removed from the situation stand in front of cameras and moan about the response. Like the people working on this situation aren’t already aware that the situation is dire, grave, tragic ... choose your adjective.
i want to make these points while everyone is fuming about the response.
1. Disaster relief takes time. Any disaster is going to take time to recover from. Every hurricane that has occurred to this point (and the tsunami, for that matter) has been a one-day event. The day after the hurricane, the skies clear and everyone begins to pick up the pieces. This is no ordinary hurricane evacuation.
2. Nobody knows how many people were in New Orleans to begin with. Estimates are up to 100,000 people. And while I understand the frustration of people who are trying to catch those buses to refugee camps in Houston and elsewhere, there’s only so much room on a bus. If every bus could hold 70 people (it’s less than that, I think), it would take 1,428 buses to get everyone out of New Orleans. It’s a five hour drive to Houston, 10 hours to San Antonio. Bus drivers cannot drive 24 hours a day.
3. Mobilization takes time. The governments had some relief supplies and vehicles ready to assist immediately following the hurricane. However, those efforts were stymied when the levees broke and the situation changed on day 2. So people began to mobilize a greater effort. But mobilization takes time. It takes time to travel, for supplies to be loaded, etc.
4. Everyone is doing the best they can at this time. President Bush says the results are “not acceptable.” Whatever. The results are what you might expect for a situation that overwhelmed any expectations as the disaster developed. It’s never “acceptable” when chaos descends and people are dying because the supplies to help them live are not there. It may not be acceptable, but sometimes it’s unavoidable.
5. Infrastructure is crucial to relief. People seem surprised that so many rescue workers on the ground don’t know what’s going on. They seem more surprised that the higher ups don’t know all of the various things going on. Let me just remind everyone: communication is still a problem because radio towers are down, cell phones are sporadically operating. Relief leaders don’t spend all day watching CNN with a cell phone in one hand and a radio in the other. “Chopper 2, FOX is showing a group of people over by the bridge. Go pick them up.” On the ground, rescue workers have jobs to do. It sounds incredibly mean, but if the workers stopped every time someone waved at them for help, they would never get the work done that they are trying to do.
6. HELP HAS BEEN ON THE WAY. See above. FOX news is saying “The good news of the day: Help is on the way.” Well, duh. Help has been on the way since day 1. IT TAKES TIME!
7. Did I mention we’ve never seen anything like this before? There’s an old saying: The best laid schemes o’ mice and men gang aft agley (often go astray). I have no doubt that emergency management personnel had detailed plans for the hurricane that hit the Gulf Coast. But those were untested plans. There were unanticipated complications. As such, there is a greater chance of confusion, and problems in implementation.
8. People are giving, and everyone is willing to help. the congressman from Maryland made the point that businesses should be on the front lines here trying to get people out. Wrong, congressman. Right now, the situation is not secure. Putting more innocent untrained civilians in harms way is not going to help. There will be plenty of time (and plenty of places outside the disaster zone) for businesses to set up and help, but in New Orleans is not the place right now. Billions of dollars have been donated already, so don’t chastise people for not giving enough.
9. This is not a time to play the race card. Again, let me repeat, there are thousands of people - black, white, yellow, whatever - who are working frantically to stabilize the situation in New Orleans. THE COLOR OF YOUR SKIN IS NOT AN ISSUE. If you want to talk about the poverty issues of people who weren’t able to evacuate, we can have that discussion in the weeks ahead. But I’ve seen thousands of poverty-stricken now-homeless people being treated in the best possible manner given the circumstances.
10. People are going to be waiting in lines! Did I mention that there are 100,000 people potentially evacuating? People are going to be standing in lines. No matter how many volunteers you have. Ever been in the line for a restroom at halftime of a football game? 20,000 people trying to get to the bathroom. Magnify that by the frustration, despair, and lack of hope of people who have been trapped in a nightmare for a week.