Posted on 09/09/2005 11:06:37 AM PDT by hipaatwo
Think local officials are less to blame for deaths in New Orleans than federal officials? In the most jaw-dropping story of the week, UPI has the police chief of Gretna, Louisiana, admitting that he closed off one of the major arteries out of New Orleans on Monday, before the storm hit:
"We shut down the bridge," Arthur Lawson, chief of the City of Gretna Police Department, confirmed to United Press International, adding that his jurisdiction had been "a closed and secure location" since before the storm hit.
"All our people had evacuated and we locked the city down," he said. The bridge in question -- the Crescent City Connection -- is the major artery heading west out of New Orleans across the Mississippi River.
He added that the small town, which he called "a bedroom community" for the city of New Orleans, would have been overwhelmed by the influx. "There was no food, water or shelter" in Gretna City, Lawson said. "We did not have the wherewithal to deal with these people. If we had opened the bridge, our city would have looked like New Orleans does now: looted, burned and pillaged."
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They're going fast!
They don't have traffic circles in NOLA, so you might have an easier time down there.
The very bottom stretch of the Mississippi has Louisiana on both sides. The bridge goes from Orleans Parish to, I believe, Jefferson Parish. It runs to the SE, but then the highway goes westward from there.
*L* .. Same here
Once I tried taking a short cut to Ocean City and some how landed up in New York
There were 120,000 people in NOLA without CARS. They friggin' couldn't get out! What part of that do y'all refuse to grasp?
Or do you intentionally ignore it because it makes it easier to justify keeping them trapped in a death zone?
For once, I'm completely speechless.
Death zone?
They could have walked for fifty miles east or west of the convention center without a drop of water touching their feet! They would have passed hundreds upon hundreds of places that had food, water, and supplies within. There were a million metric tons of supplies within 10 square miles without crossing a bridge.
I'm wrong, huh?
I'm sure you're an intelligent person and if someone told you that in two days a 300 mile-wide storm that was expected to dump double-digit amounts of rain, accompanied by high winds was about to pass through your hometown, would you stand around and wait for someone to pick you up, mollycoddle you and take you away or would you take the initiative to save your own friggin skin?
Where, tell me, in all of this tragedy, do you see people who were concerned for their own personal safety until it was clear that such was impossible to guarentee?
We're not talking about infants, cripples, and people in comas here, we're talking about people who had the means and the cunning to pillage Wal-Mart, but who couldn't apply that brainpower and intiative to the (potential)saving their own lives.
I'm sorry, but I've seen this attitude all too often here on the Carolina shores or in Florida: people board up and hope for the best. I actually recall one pre-storm interview with a NO public official who complained that every year they're told to board up and hunker down and then nothing happens. It never enters anyone's mind that this MIGHT BE THE YEAR IT ACTUALLY HAPPENS.
That's not a failing of government, by the way, that's a failure of the individual to do what is necessary to protect life and property, in that order.
If New Orleans is ever rebuilt, I hope they do it 50 miles inland and on top of a hill, and repopulate it with Irish Setters, because at least a dog has the sense to get out of flooded house.
It was flooded.
There were a million metric tons of supplies within 10 square miles without crossing a bridge.
And how were they to know where those supplies were?
The bridge was an OFFICIAL evacuation route. It was blocked for people NEEDING to evacuate a flooded city. That was WRONG.
The point is, these people had no cars. And the city failed to follow its own plan to get them out. There were no flights available or rental cars. A lot of tourists couldn't even get out.
So tell me, Sherlock - how WERE they supposed to leave at that point?
And when they were willing to walk to get out later, they were blocked from doing such.
When they were willing to walk later was already way too late.
The point is that they should have started walking, riding bicycles or constructing rickshaws PRIOR to the storm coming through.
It's called enlightened self-interest. Perhaps if more people possessed it, this would be a better world.
Saved lives? We know that he cost some people their lives.
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They're going fast!
Think of it like this. Your body mass is denser and thus weighs more than a vehicle.
Consider this, a car has a footprint of around 45-50 square feet while a person has a footprint of around one square foot and weighs 150 pounds.
The weight of people Walking in a 50 square foot area is 7500 pounds much heaver than the average vehicle.
You're full of it. Where did you get your engineering degree?
Have you ever heard of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Walk? One day a year, tens of thousands of people walk across the bridge and are shuttled back on the other span.
Forty to 60 thousand people show up every year, to walk the 4.3 mile bridge, part of which is suspension. See the photos at:
http://www.roadstothefuture.com/Chesa_Bay_Bridge_Walk.html
Don't they also have a bridge walk on the Golden Gate bridge?
Oh, that's friggin' brilliant. Walk just far enough to be caught out in the open for a Cat 5.
Please try and adjust your views to have some relevance in real-world situations.
Unfortunately, too many freepers on this thread aren't. And are trying to defend this action.
Amen!
He said that in addition to his security concerns, an unmoored vessel on the river "raised the threat that it might crash into and breach the levee, which would have flooded Gretna."
He says that his officers did assist about 4000 people who "arrived at the doorstep of (Gretna City)" either by crossing the bridge before it was closed or approaching from another route.
"We commandeered public transit buses and we took them to higher and safer ground" at the junction of Interstate-10 and Causeway Boulevard where "there was food and shelter," he said.
Lawson was interviewed on TV and while he didn't go into the methods used to repel the evacuees (a few days after the hurricane had passed), he did confirm that after the hurricane, he shut down the bridge and sent people coming across the bridge back into Orleans.
The interview was a few days ago and it sounds like he's sticking to his story. His reasoning on TV was that since his parrish didn't have the resources to help, everyone was better off with the evacuees in Orleans, since that was where the help was headed to.
There was no flooding at the Convention Center. The whole downtown area was completely clear of flooding. Do you realize that the bridge is at least 10 miles long, that they would have had to walk for several more miles to reach a relatively unpopulated area? This relatiely unpopulated area has no were near the available supplies within one mile of the convention center. There were 100 buses at the Dome and Convention center. 160 buses within a mile that were completely drivable (1 foot of water).
They had hundreds upon hundreds of nearby buildings that had supplies. If they couldn't find the supplies in these building how were they to find them 50 miles away in a small town?
I am talking about before the storm for those who refuse to read.
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