By Barbara Stock (09/07/05)
Hurricanes do not sneak up on people. Unlike tornadoes, hurricanes don’t just reach down out of the dark storm clouds to wreak havoc on humanity. Hurricanes are tracked, named, have warning flags dedicated to them, and all coastal cities have long-standing plans for dealing with them. Nearly everyone in the world knew Katrina was going to hit Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama and yet, so many have died in New Orleans. Why?
Hurricane Katrina struck the tip of southern Florida as a category 1 hurricane and made a beeline for the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. For three days Katrina churned her way across the Gulf, growing in size and strength until she was a monster storm. With sustained winds of over 175 mph, Katrina bore down on the city of New Orleans. Literally, at the last possible moment, Katrina was pushed, ever-so-slightly, by dry air from the Midwest, off to the East and dropped from a category 5 to a high category 4 with sustained winds of 160 mph. Katrina was still a killer storm by anyone’s description. For three long days, the governor of Louisiana and the mayor of New Orleans watched Katrina bear down on their state and city respectively but took very little action to protect their citizens other than to state the obvious: “Leave town.” No assistance was offered to the poor or elderly.
Aerial views of New Orleans have shown pictures of hundreds of buses, left parked and unused. Why didn’t the mayor of New Orleans activate those buses to move the people out of the city who wanted to leave but had no way out? Why was this golden opportunity to save lives left parked, only to be lost to the flood waters? This from the Louisiana disaster plan, pg. 13, paragraph 5, dated 01/00: “The primary means of hurricane evacuation will be personal vehicles. School and municipal buses, government-owned vehicles and vehicles provided by volunteer agencies may be used to provide transportation for individuals who lack transportation and require assistance in evacuating'...” Why was the city’s own disaster plan for using those buses to evacuate people not implemented? Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin had three days to evacuate the poor and elderly from New Orleans but they did not. Why? More
Anyway... this 'idiot' actually said everyone knows the President is at fault because he was so slow to order evacuation -- then she says -- 'look at the movies, there is an emergency and Harrison Ford picks up the phone and says to someone on the other end to do it now! Bush didn't do that because he didn't care and hates blacks'
I almost fell out of my chair. This is what the country bases a President on now -- Harrison Ford!! To hell with Federal Laws... this is the way it's done in MOVIES!!!!