Posted on 09/19/2005 5:21:23 AM PDT by CobaltBlue
Obviously you've never lived in a place that gets hurricanes.
Evacuating an island is one thing. Evacuating a major city is something else entirely.
If every city on the Gulf Coast evacuated every time there was a hurricane -- they would have had to evacuate millions of people, from Mobile to Lafayette.
Where do you put millions of people? Where do you put the thousands who are on life support? There aren't enough empty spaces just sitting there, empty, month after month, year after year, on the off chance that a Cat 4 - 5 hurricane will hit a major city.
Reports are still conflicting as to the timing, sequence and cause of flooding and levee breaches.
Though several government agencies were certain by 6 p.m. on Monday that New Orleans' levee system had given way, no official screamed for urgent help when daylight hours might still have permitted a rescue effort.By that time, water had been pouring from the damaged 17th Street Canal for perhaps as long as 15 hours. A National Guard Bureau timeline places the breach at 3 a.m. Monday and an Army Corps of Engineers official said a civilian phoned him about the problem at 5 a.m., saying he had heard about it from a state policeman. But officials sounded no alarm until Tuesday morning, after the city had been flooding for at least 24 hours.
http://www.presstelegram.com/Stories/0,1413,204%257E21474%257E3049016,00.html
And http://homepage.ntlworld.com/c.mcmahon4/nola/ is one of the better summaries of which levees were breached.
That link is factually very helpful.
.. they had a bad experience with previous evacuations. I take that as they evacuated (before, not for Katrina), and had their property looted. Some people stayed behind to ward off looters.
"Where do you put millions of people?"
I don't know!!! But then, I am NOT the mayor of a city with a history of flooding and I did not run for and win office in that city and purport to HAVE A PLAN, while blaming everyone else when MY PLAN did not get put in action.
Never mind the days long warning about the magnitude of the storm...those local officials dropped the ball.
Nothing justifies the amount and kind of suffering that took place.
Me, I've got arthritis in my shoulders. Doubt I could swing a sledge hammer to much use. But I think the vents are easy enough to knock loose? They don't look too substantial.
I usually evacuate - but there's so much crying wolf (not intentionally) with hurricanes, that anything could happen. After the disaster in NewO I took a look at my roof and saw a place where a small door could be placed from the attic to the outside that would open to the roof. If I sub the job myself, it'll probably cost around $500. I'm think about it... Until Bush gets Emergency Disaster Relief under the DOD, it could be like NewO for any of us, if not a flood a terrorist attack.
Maybe new building codes, maybe new ideas. Something has to give.
Absolutely. Nobody knows when their number is up.
Personally, when I lived in New Orleans, we always evacuated.
Almost everybody I know who still lives there evacuated, too.
I have one friend who stayed to volunteer with Civil Defense, or whatever it's called. And another friend who stayed with his elderly mother. Both got out later.
And then there's about a dozen or so people I can't get in touch with, still.
I'm so sorry. I hope they'll all be OK - this is so hard. My prayers are with you for your friends.
My sister called yesterday to tell me that one friend who did evacuate died Saturday.
I assume heart attack because he was only 50.
She read it in the paper, and I can't get in touch with anybody!
It's just crazy-making.
I spoke with him a week ago, he seemed fine. But must have been under terrible stress. He did not know what shape his house was in, he lost his job because his place of work was flooded out, he was having problems already with the insurance companies.
Other people I can get in touch with are just going from house to house, staying with friends. At least they have a car and money, but no jobs anymore.
I imagine we'll see a lot of people just dying from the stress.
Certainly there were some who would've left if they could've, but how many would've stayed and still have been making these calls? Mandatory does not equal forced.
In Mississippi I've seen hip high water lines inside buildings that were 25 feet above sea level.
I understand--it's because they were people without cars and weren't provided transportation out of the city BEFORE the storm. After the storm it was too late to help them avoid the tragedy that was coming. If one good thing comes out of this it should be that the local governments MUST take responsibility for getting their carless citizens out of dangers path. This should be a case study for every large city in this country as those cities have the largest population dependent on public transportation. I just hope these sad lessons are truly learned.
I said car-less citizens, not careless.
In NO proper that was true, but there was a storm surge as high as 25 or 26 feet in places that were not protected by levies.
The water took entire houses off their foundations and moved entire neighborhoods.
Thanks to the MSM and it's focus on NOLA we are forgetting that this storm hit three states hard, and actually NOLA didn't get hit as badly as other areas. If not for the incompetence and corruption of the city and state there wouldn't be much a story there at all.
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