Posted on 09/02/2005 2:54:29 AM PDT by jimbo123
As buses finally started arriving to pluck refugees from the Louisiana Superdome yesterday, a horrifying picture emerged of the squalor, violence and mayhem that they faced during the days spent huddled in the stadium.
Twenty-five thousand miserable people — many of whom lost their homes to Hurricane Katrina — hunkered down with little food and little water, overflowing toilets, stifling heat and the unbearable stench of human waste.
Children slept in pools of urine. Crack vials littered the bathrooms. Bloodstains smeared the walls near vending machines that had been pried open. Gunfire has ricocheted down the corridors.
There were two reports of rape, one involving a child. Three people died — one a distraught man who jumped to his death, saying he had nothing left to live for.
"We pee on the floor. We are like animals," Taffany Smith, 25, told the Los Angeles Times, while she gripped her 3-week-old son in her arms.
-snip-
Supplies were dangerously low, with one mother saying officials told her to reuse diapers by scraping them out when they got dirty.
-snip-
"There is feces on the walls," said Bryan Hebert, 43. "There is feces all over the place."
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Could not have said it better!! This is the crux OF IT ALL!
What happens when 70,000 people attend a superbowl event? This situation deteriorated almost immediatly. Yes, I know an event lasts a few hours and the plumbing works, but the point I am making is that for the most part the people there made a bad situation much worse.. lack of initiative and responsibility..behavior they are accustomed to whether they were confined in a superdome or back home. They turned the superbowl into a getto overnite.
For what it's worth, "gub'mint" is also the redneck word for government - usually meaning federal (or at least state). Funny how the redneck and ebonic languages coincide every so often!
Thanks for the Update! The world still turns even though NO has finally taken the big flush!
Kill A Commie For Mommie
Seven Dead Monkeys Page O Tunes
I agree. I wondered why an armed helicopter escort of evac buses wasn't the first response to snipers.
Some woman at the Superdome was complaining that she had only had MREs to eat "no hot meals in four days, just army food, army food, army food, it's terrible food" and "nothing to drink except water, everyday it's water, water, water . . . always trying to give me water."
There are people dying of dehydration, with no roof over their heads and no food and she's bitching about free and abundant MREs and water.
I am not totally disagreeing with your point, as obviously the inhabitants made it much worse than it needed to be by their actions. However, 50 tons or more of feces and urine per day is going to make a huge mess regardless of how you handle it.
Few people run the numbers as to what is required to provide food, water and sanitation to large numbers of people. We take our existing infrastructure so much for granted that we don't realize how quickly massive problems develop when it disappears. We seem to think that these services are just there by natural law, as they have always been provided to us without our lifting a finger.
Yes they are and they are figuring a major power outage is a cheap ticket.
Good point. Under the circs, I'd be very happy to get clean water and MREs.
Welcome to pristine Africa.
"NIGHTMARE OF ROBBERY, FILTH, DEATH & RAPE IN SUPERDOME"
Actually the title says it all, only that it magnifies what takes place in NOLA every day since now it's all happening under the roof of one building.
The title could have read; "NIGHTMARE OF ROBBERY, FILTH, DEATH & RAPE IN NEW ORLEANS", but then no one would have paid attention.
Your plan is a good one. However, it must be examined in the light of political realities.
Last year a hurricane was predicted to hit the Tampa Bay area. Not by the meteorologists, but by the local news people, who don't seem to understand the concept of probability.
The storm swerved south, hitting Port Charlotte, where some native of Tampa hed fled to avoid the storm. Imagine what would happen to the political career of someone who dragged the population off like this and then it missed the city.
Look at how upset people get when the government issues a terror threat warning and then nothing happens! Imagine their response to being forcibly dragged 100 miles inland and then nothing happens.
By the time we know for sure an area will be hit, it is too late to fully evacuate a large city.
I have a feeling their mayors and governor will be a little more swift with punishment then what the ones in LA were.
Exactly. This is the hard lesson for all those African countries that throw out the evil white devils. They find that it takes hard work to organize a civilization, decent living doesn't just magically appear and you can only loot for so long. Regardless, I find it inexcusable that the Mayor of NO/Governor of LA didn't have an official presence at the Superdome. Where are/were the police?
Why aren't the elderly and children being evacuated first?
Someone of Fox yesterday told of how he was sending some buses to N.O. to pick up people.
When asked which people would be taken first, the guy said "first come, first served".
All i could think of was that there would be a stampede of death.
Reason needs to prevail in your all-condemning statements. There is no way that every official from top to bottom deserves equal blame and that all have as you put it dropped the ball.
You cannot tell, from your vantage point, who has or has not done what. So you lob verbal grenades at them all. So go ahead, you can attack me, too. I'll stand with the Feds in this horrible situation that was by appearances created from the ground up, not from the top down.
Until I have sound reason to conclude otherwise, which I sure don't right now.
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