Don't Know, Don't Care

I'm sorry I never got to see New Orleans.

I saw a clip on TV last night in which a reporter did a double take when a still-stranded woman who gave birth during the hurricane assured him that, yes, she really did name her tiny new baby daughter Katrina. Maybe some people would think it upsetting to be named after the worst natural disaster their country has yet known, but nonetheless I thought it was a cool thing to do. Katrina's not a bad name, and why not name your girl child after something that powerful, something that changed your life in a moment as irrevocably as her birth did?

The delayed rescue efforts and horrific aftermath of this hurricane have been as revealing as they've been heart-rending. Why did it take so long? I hope the post-mortem of the whole rescue operation will be made public and soon. Even considering racism, I still think even Bush and his cronies would have liked to have seen some serious helpful action no later than two days into the crisis. But it took four, in the richest country on earth! What the hell was going on in the hold-up? Obviously, a great deal of education, communication, collaboration, streamlining of procedures, and money are necessary to prevent such horror from happening in the U.S. again.

...And in order to rebuild New Orleans. (shaking head rapidly side to side) I've heard politicians say they're going to do this. Excuse me, but where are they going to rebuild it? I hope well inland. The city was built in the bottom of a swimming pool, and has been wiped off the map for it. Wouldn't it be a good idea to swell the populations of other still existing cities instead of setting up there again? I understand and respect that people may feel a strong sense of home and pride about the place New Orleans once was, but it seems to me the only logical recovery course is to cut the staggering losses and not make the same mistake twice.

I wondered how such a mistake could have been made in the first place. Then I heard that the old French Quarter was largely standing after the onslaught--because the city was first built on higher ground. Perhaps had it stayed at that old-fashioned scale, the city site would have been viable for a longer term.

As I thought about the slow and inadequate aid delivery, it occurred to me that in order for rescue services to be so messed up, government had to have been completely out of touch with its poorest constituents--almost entirely black. They didn't know, they didn't care about these people. I don't know which came first. Probably it goes both ways.

It's interesting that so much of the news coverage before the storm was about the overwhelming compliance of New Orleans residents with the evacuation order. We saw lots and lots of clogged outgoing highways. The government seems to have erroneously assumed that everyone could obey the evacuation order--that everyone is able to go without work for a couple of weeks and survive, that everyone has a car and relatives they can count on out of state. What they found was that almost all the white people can. It's clear that the underclass of Louisiana is much bigger and poorer and blacker than anyone in power counted on. And it's very, very sad that these people were so abandoned--before the hurricane even hit.

For years New York City has had emergency plans in place to deal with a large hurricane expected within the next 25 years to funnel into the harbour and submerge the lower third of Manhattan. After the sympathy and energy poured into rescue efforts after the WTC attacks, it's hard to imagine that stranded New Yorkers would be left waiting, hungry, thirsty, homeless and hopeless for four days amongst the rotting dead before a federal agency's help would come to them, isn't it?