Posted on 09/19/2005 7:29:37 AM PDT by I8NY
If some of those who died in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina have been described as stubborn holdouts who ignored an order to evacuate, then these citizens of New Orleans defy that portrait: The 16 whose bodies were wrapped in white sheets in the chapel of Memorial Medical Center. The 34 whose corpses were abandoned and floating in St. Rita's Nursing Home. The 15 whose bodies were stored in an operating room turned makeshift morgue at Methodist Hospital.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
After reading the article....All the blame is put on FEMA....not local government.
I' not bitching about that. All I'm saying is the only thing I'd use the NYT for is to line a birdcage. Their politics color their reporting, and in some cases, they actually have been shown to make things up. I lost all faith in them at that point. (I wish I had a brain for details, but I don't -- I'm sure someone else around here remembers the story I'm talking about! ARGH!)
I agree. The New York Times and Bat Boy reporting go hand in hand. Shiver me timbers!!
: wow - in two sentences, I see the rescuers (and presumably FEMA who should have organized them better) blamed for these people's deaths
It goes on to say that "Heroic efforts by doctors and nurses across the city prevented the toll from being vastly higher." But it does show that nursing homes are at the bottom of the list of priorities in our society. I think that's more of a reality than the griping about racism, as a lot of intelligent posts here have shown.
Very sad, and indicative of the fact that federal, state, and local rescuers saved 25,000 to 50,000 people from death.
As much as we as Americans have been lulled by Hollywood and our leftist media, there is NO utopia.
I think I know the things you are talking about. But I just make mental allowances for the bias.
Just how hot was it there right after the flood?
That is so true. I don't remember even the mayor of Chicago being blamed for that.
Nagin and Blanco were supposed to evacuate. That's what their own emergency plan said.
The trouble for me is, that when I go around making a mental allowance for bias, then I am never sure what's true and what isn't so all the reporting is suspect to me. I just can't read them cause I'm never sure what's REALLY true and what isn't. But that's just me.
The local government had days to put food and water in the superdome but they did't do anything they weighted on Others to do what they refused to do. They had busses but refused to use them, they weighted on air-conditioned busses of others.
The first responders probably assumed that the hospitals had generators, food, and water, as any sensible hospitals would have, and that the nursing homes evacuated as they were supposed to, and so they concentrated on search and rescue of the flooded homes and evacuation of the Superdome.
Contrary to your statement, their news reporting sucks ass. Incredibly one-sided on political issues. Those who counter the liberal spin on a story can be found in the back-pages continuation of a front page story, if they can be found at all.
Their choices of stories which they cover is also incredibly biased. For example, white on black racism stories merit front page or front page of the Metro section at least. Black on white racism is relegated to the NY Post, as it is so trashy and unworthy of their lofty pages.
Even their science reporting can be laughable at Times. Like their front page story about how liquid water had appeared at the north pole for the first time in millenia, because of global warming. Their retraction came after relentless mocking as to the inaccuracy of the contention. That grudging retraction appeared in a tiny little box buried deep within their pages.
They are a once grand news gathering organization that has turned into a collection of political hack trustafarian ivy league journalism school graduates, who presume to know better than everybody else, and let their sheltered world view influence their presentation of the news.
But that's just my opinion. You're free to have your own.
I dont think the storm was "last minute". Last minute was a storm like Andrew that was traveling a good 20 mph and strenthened within hours. This thing was a Cat5 DAYS before landfall. They should have all left then. But like I said, its human nature to disbelieve, to have an emotional disconnect with something they have never experienced, a storm such as this. The urgency to leave was just not there. Those with more experience (Hurricane Center guy) had to BEG Nagin to issue an evac order, but it came way too late.. you live and learn, like I said. I personally will not stay home for any storm cat3 or greater. Its stupid (lived through Andrew)...
Well, there you go. And you're not a stupid person, either.
It's a dumb mistake to stay put when a hurricane is coming, if you don't have to, but people make dumb mistakes.
Betcha them folk in New Orleans don't have to be told but one time in the future...
True, but even smart people will make these mistakes. Its just hard to "connect" emotionally with what you need to do unless you have been through it, or gone to the scene aftewards and spent some time there. You live and learn, hopefully.
Humans are simply fallible creature, which is why I dont find much fault with those who are once removed whose duty it is to save those who made the initial mistake on the scene.
Why has the MSM covered up the Clinton disaster 0f 1995?
Where was Clinton, Dewitt and FEMA in 1995? During the month of July heat wave of that year in Chicago, in spite of repeated warnings of the impending disaster, all of them stood by and let well over 1,000 (even higher if counting those who were admittted to hospitals and died later) poor, disabled and mostly Black elderly die alone and unaided in one week.
Why did Clinton, Dewitt's FEMA and Chicago Mayor Daley not follow their own heat disaster plan? Why did Clinton and FEMA down play the number of dead? Why were so many of the unclaimed dead stuffed into pine boxes and buried unceremoniously in mass graves? Why was this hushed up in the MSM after several independent studies and resulting reports laid the blame directly upon all of them.
http://www.publicaffairs.noaa.gov/pr96/apr96/noaa96-21.html
Picture of mass grave from Slate. (Slate has pulled the original strory I was linking to)
http://img.slate.msn.com/media/36/020730_MassGrave.jpg
The warnings:
http://www.emergency.com/heatwave.htm
Society isn't the problem -society is responding -the local village government failed -the democrat planned and administered sytems failed...
The whole situation was tragic, and completely avoidable, if anybody had bothered to question the sanity of building a huge city below sea level. There was no reason for any of these people to be in this disaster-waiting-to-happen location.
But once the catastrophe arose, it frankly makes no sense to expend very scarce resources on saving the sickest and most frail people, when the same resources could save a lot more healthy people. Being sick and frail doesn't automatically make a person more valuable than a healthy person. I'd hate to see three children die, because resources were diverted to save one terminally ill 80 year old cancer patient. Those are the sort of choices that people were confronted with. The irrefutable laws of economics were brought to bear. There were limited resources, and tough choices had to be made on how to allocate them.
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