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Old 08-31-2005, 10:58 PM   #10
tw
Read? I only know how to write.
 
Join Date: Jan 2001
Posts: 11,933
Review the numbers. Katrina was a category 5 storm, predicted to hit days in advance, and to strike a city not constructed to withstand anything above category 3. So why was the city not fully evacuated? For example, the prision was still full when Katrina struck. This could only happen if even city and state officials were in denial. No matter what you had heard, actions are the details that matter. Actions by local and state officials were, instead, for a category 3 storm. A category 5 storm will strike in or near your major city? 10,000 National Guardsman would have been called up and ready to move within hours after the storm. That being only one of so many actions necessary for a category 5 storm that everyone knew was coming.

Currently many victims have seen no food or water for 3 days now. Response has been that slow. Even worse, because so many people stayed, now others will die simply because too many people require rescue.

I am struck by the number of cars piled up in towns where all cars should have left. New Orleans parking lots also have so many cars. Again, damning details. Clearly the regional response to a category 5 storm was denial - when time, information and transport made it easy for so many to leave.

Meanwhile, watch reports for engineering information. New Orleans was only designed for a category 3 storm. Worse, its levees were constructed in a manner that was a disaster just waiting to happen. Not just that levees were too low. Even worse, these levees were not engineered. There were no second levee or levees that partitioned a city - no backup sysetm. Kludge may be a better definitioin of how levees were constructed. Kludge may also describe its pumping system. Kludge apparently was the city's plans for dealing with a disaster that everyone knew would happen sooner or later. Emotional denial is how so many in LA, MS, and AL may have responded to the numbers - category 5.

Katrina lost its category 5 status before stricking. New Orleans also did not suffer a direct strike. And yet the city is suffering from too many people to rescue; too many possible dead. Had the 'powers that be' responded to a Category 5 storm, then New Orleans would only be a flood - just another disaster. That denial is now why people have died AND why rescue is overwhelmed. A city that took category 5 seriously would have even emptied the prision. Numbers - a city only designed to withstand a category 3 storm - are that damning. The city's response suggests why so many remained and why the National Guard was not moving within hours after the storm ended.

At least FEMA this time responded per its mandate. Yet one must temper sympathy for New Orleans. Their worst problems are directly traceable to denial. Flooding is secondary to a problem created by man - they did not leave. Katrina was a category 5 storm that threatened a city only designed for category 3. Clearly logic was lost on Bourbon Street - beginning years ago. Those details such as a full prision and parking lots with so many cars suggest the real devil.
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