Posted on 09/05/2005 2:32:49 AM PDT by guitarnick40
BATON ROUGE, La. — In the chaos that was Causeway Boulevard, this group of refugees stood out: a 6-year-old boy walking down the road, holding a 5-month-old, surrounded by five toddlers who followed him around as if he were their leader.
They were holding hands. Three of the children were about 2 years old, and one was wearing only diapers. A 3-year-old girl, who wore colorful barrettes on the ends of her braids, had her 14-month-old brother in tow. The 6-year-old spoke for all of them, and he told rescuers his name was Deamonte Love.
Thousands of human stories have flown past relief workers in the last week, but few have touched them as much as the seven children who were found wandering together Thursday at an evacuation point in downtown New Orleans. In the Baton Rouge headquarters of the rescue operation, paramedics tried to coax their names out of them; nurses who examined them stayed up that night, brooding.
Transporting the children alone was "the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, knowing that their parents are either dead" or that they had been abandoned, said Pat Coveney, a Houston emergency medical technician who put them into the back of his ambulance and drove them out of New Orleans.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
God bless the children.
Think not? I'll bet that 6-year-old has seen more than most of us can imagine. His mother might well have been a drug addict who was never able to take care of him. He might have been the man of the house since he was able to walk and talk.
The children are some of the most clear-headed people in this tragedy. What they haven't been exposed to yet is a lifetime of dependency that dulls any sense of initiative and self-reliance that people are born with. Unfortunately, many of the adults are more child-like than the children.
"The pictures we see from the Superdome are of people who are mostly poor and black.
After the MSM has spent so much time focusing on looting, violence, rape, and shooting, carefully constructing an image of all the people there in NOLA as criminals, is it any wonder folks would be concerned? Sheesh!"
I saw an interview with one of the doctors that was in the Superdome from the first night. He said he saw NO violence in the dome. If their were rapes and fights he would have been treating the injuries. He said he was never worried for his safety or afraid of the people in the dome. He said he lost weight and was hungry, but he got 2 MRE's and 2 bottles of water a day.
Sounds like a completely different story than the rumors the MSM has been spreading, doesn't it?
Just had to find the rest of the story.
Nita LaGarde, 105, was pushed down the street in her wheelchair as her nurse's 5-year-old granddaughter, Tanisha Blevin, held her hand. The pair spent two days in an attic, two days on an interstate island and the last four days on the pavement in front of the convention center.
"They're good to see," LaGarde said, with remarkable gusto as she waited to be loaded onto a gray Marine helicopter. She said they were sent by God. "Whatever He has for you, He'll take care of you. He'll sure take care of you."
LaGarde's nurse, Ernestine Dangerfield, 60, said LaGarde had not had a clean adult diaper in more than two days. "I just want to get somewhere where I can get her nice and clean," she said.
From what I saw, state and local ran around in circles wringing their hands. The feds organized the largest evacuation in the history of the United States.
Isaiah 11:6 ...and a little child shall lead them.
I don't think waiting until the last minute to throw their hands up and scream "Run!" was very organizational. Where were the busses? They should know their own people well enough to know that too many couldn't run.
I'm glad he didn't get a bus:') Most of the "hero" stories that I have seen are coming from the young people.
The MSM is having a Bush bash, anti-republican, racist anti-white, "have" vs "have-not" hissy-fit in an attempt to keep the poor in general and especially poor Blacks in thrall to the Democratic Party.
The worse they can paint the picture, the more they can blame on Bush.
Oddly, though, that portrayal may have unintended consequences, as few people are inclined to be generous when the victims are portrayed as welfare leeches, criminals, or worse. No one wants to subsidize low-life (as opposed to decent folks), regardless of color or economic standing.
Ironically, had the Democrat politicos-from the Clinton levee budget cuts through the incompetence of the Mayor and Governor--done their jobs right, much of this could have been mitigated, if not avoided.
It was a crime to leave those busses parked, and not even get the vehicles to higher ground. That was a colossal waste. It was more of a crime to not have driven them out of there with a load of poor people on each one.
Everyone reacts differently, but most victims of disaster tend to be quiet, subdued, in shock, even. The perpetrators of disaster (criminals, those who stayed to loot, etc.), are the problem types. I even wonder if some of that was staged...
But by playing tawdry political games with a disaster of Biblical proportions, the MSM soil their profession. That stain will take a long time to wear off.
However, my being in New Olreans prior to this storm I can know the time line. On Friday afternoon the NWS's Storm Tracking Cone showed landfall anywhere from east of Panama City to the Texas Border. Furthermore, winds were at 110 MPH at noon on Friday. That was not a threat.
On Friday evening the mayor was on TV saying "Everyone needs to make a plan to get out of the city in case the storm heads to New Orleans. By Saturday morning the storm had intensified QUICKER THAN ANY STORM THAT HAD EVER BEEN IN THE GULF.
The Mayor held a press conference and said "This is the storm we have feared all of our lives. This is Not a Drill, Everyone needs to evacuate the city. Between Saturday morning and Sunday evening 1.25 million people evacuated the city. An evacuation on that scale had never been done in American History.
Now it is Clear that you do not know what you are talking about. Having been in the City during the evacuation it the State, Parish and City that Coordinated the Evacuation.
Next.
Short of going to everyone's house with a gun and forcing them out there was not other way to get most of these people to leave.
When you live on the Gulf Coast you learn that it is best to evacuate BEFORE THE HURRICANE and interestingly 1.25 million people were able to do all without any help from the Fed.
Yes, 1.25 million people were evaucated before the hurricane hit. All of this was coordianted by the State, Parish and City Governemtns.
The Feds were not there on Friday, Saturday, Sunday or Monday.
"And the Governor was ------"
The governor of LA abdicated all responsibility in the course of events evolving around Katrina, as have all the Dims calling for the President's head.
Okay, calm yourself. I misread your post and corrected myself, as you can see.
Yes, 1.25 million got out. But too many couldn't, and that was a local failure. The locals knew their people had no means to evacuate.
I have not spent my entire life in Seattle. I lived in New Orleans for two years, and the southeast itself for another four. I've been through hurricanes in New Orleans.
There was no reason for them to be there. There wasn't a federal level disaster until the levee broke, after the storm had passed.
"How would Your Local Government have done?"
The people who evacuated did so mostly on their own, in their own transportation. State police obviously helped direct the smooth flow of traffic, and in some cases all four lanes of Interstates were used to carry traffic in one direction away from the storm impact areas. The catasterphy in New Orleans resulted from no coordinated effort to get the people without transportation out. The NO Mayor and the LA Governor failed miserably in this. No one else had the responsibility. They had it and failed. Hundreds of school buses and other buses were not used and still sit, flooded where they were parked. If you run out of buses, put people in trucks to get them out. But get them out. No, the @$$hole mayor said the buses had to be 'Greyhound' 'cause they had toilets. What an ignorant piece of feces!
In Post 45 you wrote:
The feds organized the largest evacuation in the history of the United States.
In Post 54 you wrote:
There was no reason for them to be there. There wasn't a federal level disaster until the levee broke, after the storm had passed.
Now which is it? Did the Fed organize the largest evacuation as you stated in 45 or was "there no reason for them to be there as stated in 54?
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