As for The Weather Channel, Central and Eastern Montana as well as Western North Dakota don't even exist.
Get outta here! You were standing on your roof, waving your arms wildly with the sheets spelling out "HELP ME M*THER F*CKER" for the FOX News camera during the non-stop "Blizzard Albert" coverage.
Is Geraldo really that short in person?
Owl_Eagle
"You know, I'm going to start thanking
the woman who cleans the restroom in
the building I work in. I'm going to start
thinking of her as a human being"
I'm laughing right now - not at the story though. My oldest is a 19 year old boy who knows EVERYTHING. He decided that the rules of our home were too restrictive (no alcohol, tobacco or drugs) so he moved away. He settled in Minot, ND about 7 months ago after having lived in the SF Bay Area his entire life. Wonder how he likes it ND?
Hehehe!
Was this even mentioned on national tv?
Your right though, folks around here are more reliant on noone to start with, so, they don't need the governments help.
The LMSM is all in a tither with breaking news: Cold winters and hot summer trends are expected to continue until Bush gets US out of iraq.
A blizzard doesn't seep inside all structures in a given area. A blizzard does not leave behind acres of mold-infested drywall. And unlike the NOLA flood, you admittedly get blizzards every year.
Silly comparison.
Yours is the politically correct version of an Email I received this morning:
Subject: Why Wyoming is a great state!
Wyoming News Bulletin
This text is from a county emergency manager out in the western
part of Wyoming after the storm.
Amusing, if it were not so true...WEATHER BULLETIN
Last winter in Wyoming we recovered from a Historic event ---may I even say a "Weather Event" of "Biblical Proportions" --with a historic blizzard of up to 52" inches of snow and wind to
80 MPH that broke trees in half, stranded hundreds of motorists
in lethal snow banks, closed all roads, isolated scores of
communities and cut power to 10's of thousands.
FYI:
George Bush did not come....
FEMA staged nothing....
No one howled for the government...
No one even uttered an expletive on TV....
Jesse Jackson did not show up....
Nobody demanded $2000 debit cards.....
No one asked for a FEMA Trailer House....
No one looted....
Phil Cantori of the Weather Channel did not come....
And Geraldo Rivera did not move in.
Nope, we just melted snow for water, sent out people on horseback to pluck people out of snow engulfed cars, fired up wood stoves, broke out oil lanterns and put on an extra layer of clothes because up here it is 'work or die'. We did not wait for some affirmative action government to get us out of a mess created by being immobilized by a welfare program that trades votes for 'sitting at home' checks.
"In my many travels, I have noticed that once one gets north of
about 42 degrees North Latitude and west of 95 degrees West Longitude, 90% of the world's social problems evaporate."
Did more than a quarter million folks in NODAK and MT evacuate their homes in preparation for the blizzard. Are there tens of thousands currently homeless as a result of the blizzard?
I'm from Southwest Louisiana and I have to say that Katrina was a black eye for the state. But, most of the state outside of New Orleans has little love for the city and it's staggering corruption and incompetence. Rita was a little different, but the "gimme, gimme" precedent from Katrina was already set.
But trying to compare a blizzard to a hurricane is quite simply sheer ignorance. Trying to compare 150 MPH winds with 50 MPH is ridiculous. Did any storms knock houses off their slabs or pilings? Did 20 feet of water completely engulf entire neighborhoods? Did 1000 people die? Are there any towns where the only thing left standing is the water tower?
When I went home to help my family and check on my father's camp after Rita, I couldn't believe the destrucion. Entire houses destroyed. Streets washed away in many places. Impassable streets blocked by what used to be some of the world's most beautiful oak trees. And this was just the Louisiana side.
After Katrina and Rita literally hundreds of acres of Louisiana are gone. Just washed into the gulf like the tide washes away sand castles.
To put this in a perspective that you might understand--these were F2 and F3 tornadoes several hundred miles wide.
Think about it. Your blizzard didn't destroy homes and businesses by the thousands. They also didn't interfere with nearly 25% of the nation's oil supply either.
Careful, I haven't read all the posts, but I'll bet real money you get a bunch of people from hurricane states crying about how bad they have it and how mean you are. I always want to ask them, "Then why the hell do you live there?"
I asked on another thread do the taxpayers in ND, MT etc.. get tired of seeing their money wasted in places where people choose to live below sea level, flood plains, side of hills that slide etc... and they get or ask for very little help.
The constitution does not say the feds are responsible for disasters. It is the states who need to deal with it.
great post.
Growing up in northern North Dakota there were plenty of blizzards.
Not once did I think the Feds would ever show up...where's my retroactive $2,000 w/interest?
Don't get me started. It still pisses me off that the gooberment fell all over themselves for Katrina (Louisiana) victims and you hardly hear a whisper from Mississippi whose coast was all but obliterated or those affected by Rita in Eastern Texas in September. North Dakota and Montana can at least hold their heads up and tell the media and the government to go to blazes. God Bless all of you affected by this blizzard.
What's the difference? They're a blue state, you're a red state. Their suffering included a lot of minorities, yours includes a lot of white people and cattle ranchers. Shall I go on?
This response is directed primarily to the callous, arrogant ignorance demonstrated by the writer(s) of the "North Dakota News"...and to anyone who harrumphed in agreement with their ill-informed drivel...
While I am sympathetic to the motorists who were stranded in the recent blizzard "of Biblical proportions" (I'm still looking for any mention of a blizzard in the Bible), I am offended by the crass and mindless comparison with the unparalleled disaster that was Hurricane Katrina.
Let me begin by stating that we understand that most folks respond to what they see on TV, without investing further thought as to whether these images are true or accurate. I ask these people, consider when was the last time you got the "straight" story from the national news media? I freely acknowledge that all the bad behavior they covered is true: the looting, the gouging, the welfare-dependency, the venial, selfish laziness celebrated by the national media, and by the ND News, is all out there--and we are disgusted by it. However, in the worst case, these sorry excuses for human beings are very much in the minority. But you wouldn't know that by listening to "news" from North Dakota. I don't suppose you have any basket cases there, do you...
As for the straight story: My wife and I saw Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath up close and personal. We don't need to forward second-hand reports. We speak with authority. We lost our house and everything in it. We lost our whole neighborhood. Every neighborhood within 26 miles in either direction of us was erased...as in destroyed or rendered uninhabitable. Two whole towns were wiped out (Waveland and Pearlington). What is "wiped out?" More than 98% of the structures in the city limits and the near outlying areas were no longer standing.
According to Red Cross statistics--in Mississippi alone--there were over 68,000 homes destroyed and more than 65,000 so heavily damaged that they were uninhabitable, making a total of nearly 134,000 homes lost. We lost over 60,000 homes just in Hancock and Harrison counties.
Oh, as for our economy...you know, where the money for food comes from...over 100,000 jobs evaporated in eight hours: Two-thirds of the US shrimping fleet, eleven major casinos, the Northrop-Grumman shipyard (one of two major shipyards in the US), two Navy bases, an Air Force base, the Port of Gulfport (if your banana says Dole or Chiquita, it came through here), a major NASA research and test facility, a major NOAA weather and data processing center, and a DuPont plant. That's just the big stuff.
The "little" businesses got slammed, too. Two universities, a VA hospital, and one of the nation's two Armed Forces retirement homes were washed through. "Washed through" means while there might be something standing, you can see through the first two floors. I can't easily count the number of restaurants and smaller businesses that "used to be there."
Perspective:
>>Up here in the Northern Plains we just recovered from a Historic
>>event--- may I even say a "Weather Event" of "Biblical Proportions" ---
>>with a historic blizzard of up to 44" inches of snow and winds to 90 MPH
>>that broke trees in half, knocked down utility poles, stranded hundreds
>>of motorists in lethal snow banks, closed ALL roads, isolated scores of
>>communities and cut power to 10's of thousands.
Down here in Mississippi, we had 35 feet of salt water (that's 420 inches--water, not snow), driven by sustained winds of over 165 mph (the gusts were over 200 mph), and "lethal" waves towering 15-20 feet. Radar recorded several hundred tornadoes. Thousands of trees were ripped up by their roots and knocked down like matchsticks. Tens of thousands of trees were "snapped in half." The entire power grid in the southern half of Mississippi had to be replaced, including a large number of substations. 65% of the power grid in the entire state of Mississippi was damaged. In Mississippi alone, well over a million people (compared to only 642,000 people in the whole state of ND) were without power during weeks of 90-95 degree heat. 100% of Mississippi Power Co. customers lost power; 16 months later, 60% prior service has been restored. The other 40% of homes formerly served are gone.
Hundreds of thousands of cars were flooded and/or smashed. Roads weren't closed here, they were destroyed down to their beds. Major sections--miles--of US Highway 90 were buckled and overturned. The US 90 bridges over the Bay of St. Louis and the Bay of Biloxi were smashed like errant Lego blocks. The Interstate 10 bridges over Lake Ponchartrain and the Pascagoula River were also down.
When the almost-4 feet of snow melted, did these "hundreds of motorists" find all of their belongings strewn across the ravaged landscape? What little we found of our life's accumulation of treasured, irreplaceable mementos and heirlooms, we had to dig out of a 25-foot tall wall of debris. Well, I should say we searched the debris pile until armed National Guardsmen asked us to leave so they could remove corpses from the rubble...two of the "hundreds" of people who were killed--not snowed in--in Katrina. (Current body count hovers around 2,000)
More perspective:
>>Nope, they just melted the snow for water.
>>Sent out caravans of SUV's to pluck people out of snow engulfed cars.
>>The truck drivers pulled people out of snow banks and didn't ask for a penny.
>>Local restaurants made food, and the police and fire departments delivered it to the snow bound families.
>>Families took in the stranded people - total strangers.
>>They fired up wood stoves, broke out coal oil or Coleman lanterns.
In the houses that survived, there wasn't any running water for weeks. In neighborhoods still standing, there were boil-water notices for five months after the storm. Some neighborhoods still have boil-water notices, because the water and sewer system was destroyed, and all the water treatment plants were heavily damaged (I forgot to mention this earlier, it seemed so small).
Caravans of private citizens in fishing boats rescued people trapped in attics, and didn't ask for a penny.
Local restaurants would have made food, but there weren't many left. There was no power for weeks. People shared MREs and any other food they could find. We cooked over Coleman stoves and used hurricane lanterns for light. We call that fuel "kerosene" down here, by the way, not coal oil. Coleman lanterns were popular, too. The new gas bottles are great. Of course the trick was getting replacements. Most people had stockpiled emergency supplies in advance, but no one expected them to have to last so long. There was no gasoline to drive the 100 miles or so to the nearest stores for re-supply.
There was plenty of wood, though. FEMA estimates they removed 68 million cubic yards of trees and other organic debris...and they're not done yet.
Families not only took in stranded people, they're still living that way 16 months later. We stayed with friends for a month after the storm, then we housed another family for two months after that.
Oh yes, let's have a word about government assistance:
>>They did not wait for some affirmative action government to get them out
>>of a mess created by being immobilized by a welfare program that trades
>>votes for 'sittin at home' checks.
In Mississippi, neighborhood men with their own chainsaws cleared the roads and located survivors. Men and women in neighborhoods organized watch groups against looting. Neighborhood churches set up food tents and relief stations to triage the injured...those injured in the storm and those injured in the cleanup. I didn't notice any "sittin' at home" going on, and I didn't see anyone immobilized. I did see thousands of shocked and grief-stricken people receiving, gratefully, many forms of relief--not from the government, but from private volunteer agencies like the Salvation Army, Operation Blessing, and Franklin Graham's Samaritan's Purse. Yes, they were all Faith-based. The "government" did what government does best: send National Guard and Law Enforcement personnel from all over the USA, except, apparently, North Dakota.
Unfortunately, the "government" did what government does worst, as well: Trying to apply a one-size-fits-all aid package to a demographic that is as diverse as any in America. Of course there were going to be abuses and waste.
The question I have is, would either the response or the outcome be any better in North Dakota? Or anywhere else?
One other thing: In contrast to politicians in neighboring states, the governor of Mississippi was not incapacitated when disaster struck. He had the Mississippi emergency management effort in action--and effective--even as the storm chewed its destructive path through the middle of our state. Mississippi's Coastal Mayors rolled up their sleeves and dug people out even as they coordinated rescue, relief, and recovery efforts. If you want to see state and local government that works, just come on down.
I can't help responding to this one:
>>"I have noticed that once one gets north of about 48 degrees North
>>Latitude, 90% of the world's social problems evaporate."
I have noticed that once one gets north of about 48 degrees North, 90% of the world's PEOPLE evaporate. After checking the map, it looks like 90% of North Dakota gets left behnd, too. Maybe there's a correlation...
Hurricane Katrina was the worst natural disaster to hit the United States in its entire history. If you consider only the southern six counties of Mississippi, in isolation, Hurricane Katrina is STILL the worst natural disaster in US history. Never mind New Orleans. Comparing all that to a snow storm would be laughable, except that it exposes the ugly bigotry and arrogance of certain people, smug and far-removed from the suffering.
I have learned that disaster is the most revealing event in the human experience. It magnifies a person's character, for good or for bad. I have witnessed greatness in common people. I have seen corruption and weakness in the highly-placed. And vice versa.
The writer of this "Cat 5 blizzard" e-mail, and all who have agreed with it, have shown their true colors: petty, small, and self-congratulatory. These are the colors of cowards and bullies, not the self-reliant plainsmen they pretend to be.
Josef Stalin once said, "The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of millions is a statistic." The sheer magnitude of Katrina blurs perception. It isn't a million lives upended--it is one life upended, a million times over.
Have a Merry Christmas in your ivory tower.
"I used to complain that I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no class." Mark Twain