Posted on 09/07/2005 1:16:03 AM PDT by conservative in nyc
When their homes began to sink in Katrina's floodwaters, elders in the quarter here known as Uptown gathered their neighbors to seek refuge at the Samuel J. Green Charter School, the local toughs included.
But when the thugs started vandalizing the place - wielding guns and breaking into vending machines - Vance Anthion put them out, literally tossing them into the fetid waters. Anthion stayed awake at night after that, protecting the inhabitants of the school from looters or worse.
"They know me," he said. "If a man come up in here, we take care of him."
In the week after Katrina pummeled the Gulf Coast, Anthion and others created a society that defied the local gangs, the National Guard and even the flood.
Inside the school, it was quiet, cool and clean. They converted a classroom into a dining room and, when a reporter arrived Monday, were serving a lunch of spicy red beans and rice. A table nearby overflowed with supplies: canned spaghetti, paper towels, water and Gatorade, salt, hot sauce, pepper.
At its peak last Wednesday, 40 people called the second and third floors home. The bottom floor was under water. Most of those taking up residence at the school were family, friends and neighbors of the poor, forgotten niches of this community.
As the days passed, most chose to be evacuated by the Coast Guard who, they said, came every day to help ferry out the elderly and sick, and to leave water, food and clean clothes for whose who preferred to stay.
By Monday, just 10 diehards remained at the school.
(Excerpt) Read more at baltimoresun.com ...
Long past time for this to stop.
Even the numbscull Nagin has said that everybody will be evacuated, its time to git er done.
People this resoursefull will be fine anywhere, they don't need to stay there.
The ability to safely sustain living in this afflicted area is at least two months away. Maybe sooner, but that's still a long time to live on Spagetti-o's.
You almost lost me on the very first sentence. I don't believe anybody's homes "sunk" into the waters. Other than that, good story.
Heh. The article says: "After a brief ride, they arrived on dry land and transferred to white vans. A police officer said they were going to the Convention Center and later would be bused to Texas."
I wonder if any of them survived the convention center....
If they force diehards from their homes, Jesse and Al and pals will scream racism. Democrats will hammer this all the way to '08 since they need the black vote and this is the only way to get it other than bribery. (They'll do that,too.) Just now on Fox Judge Naplitano wanted to know if there were anecdotes at all of people being dragged out against their will. There must be legal issues esp. if they're still not declaring mandatory evacuation.
Fox is slamming FEMA: a memo has been found from Mike Brown requesting from his boss, Chertoff, some 1000 extra people to go to NO, but only 5 hours after Katrina hit. Red tape, bureaucracy in the way, now repeating Nancy Pelosi's suggestion that Bush fire Mike Brown. Maybe I missed a segment where they went over Blanco's disgraceful conduct before, during, and after Katrina? Oh, well. We'll make sure it doesn't go away.
Dems all over are jumping on the Katrina bandwagon. Here in MA, Delahunt, a party hack hoping to be gov. is screaming at FEMA for not knowing if people want to come to MA or not. Romney's been getting a military base on the Cape ready for them...Otis Airforce Base. But that plan is on hold while Louisiana flood victims decide if they want to go so far away. (Delahunt thinks it's you know whose fault.)
I have heard that martial law has AT LAST been declared and now the law allows the people to be removed at gunpoint. The last thing the people cleaning up this mess need right now are more people who won't look after themselves dying at the feet of Anderson Cooper because they refused to be evacuated.
I disagree except for places under water. If it is dry and the electricity has a hope of being restored in a week or two they stay and work at their jobs if they exist or they work in the rebuild. It is insane to totally evacuate, when you need people with all kinds of skill to work and you need people who WANT to live there.
Drive them away in a forced evac, from dry ground and you destroy the incentive to ever come back, to what, a looted or burned house or you have no idea what after someone in the bureaucracy decides it is safe to return, and then weeks later your own personal rebuild starts. Not my way of doing it, but then who am I. I should have mentioned operational sewer system as one of the possible criteria.
The most serious question of all is: Where are they going to dispose of their bodily wastes? Having had a massive plumbing failure in my house a few months ago, I know that a house can be rendered uninhabitable faster by a massive plumbing failure than anything else. I was living at the local Motel 6 until it was fixed. This is an issue anyone staying in NO will have to confront. Massive piles of untreated human waste accumulating throughout the city will also rapidly become a massive municipal sanitation and health problem. People who can't be provided with adequate sanitary facilities need to be evacuated.
No Sh*T! ... (ooops, bad pun). What jobs? I suspect the ports and the city center will be restored, but I think it would be criminal to re-open those flooded neighborhoods especially those that flooded to the roof line. That part should simply be purchased by the state/city/feds and bulldozed, allowed to fill with river silt and returned to parkland or something.
How anyone could want to wish this event on future generations is beyond belief, these areas must not be re-populated.
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