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Strider33 -> RE: No fuss about flooding? (6/26/2008 4:56:06 AM)
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The circumstances of the two floods are quite different.
As has already been pointed out, evacuating 500,000 people is a large task. It carries a large cost, a large risk to personal property left behind, and even a risk to a few human lives. When hurricane Rita hit Houston a few weeks after Katrina, people were evacuated on buses, and a few of them died on the bus.
In retrospect, the mayor should certainly ordered an evacuation, using commandeered school buses. However, the best weather estimates were that Katrina was going to give New Orleans a glancing blow. That is in fact what happened. The eye came ashore in Mississippi or Alabama. And the best estimates were that the levees were going to withstand that kind of glancing blow. Those estimates turned out to be wrong. So the decision not to evacuate was not as obviously wrong at the time as it turned out to be.
Cooperation between city, state and federal emergency relief was terrible in Katrina. It has been somewhat improved since then. In particular, the state delayed a day or two before asking the federal relief to go in, and the federals waited to be asked.
Once the Ward 9 was flooded, the water had no place to go. As others have written, it's below sea level. The water had to be pumped out, a matter of weeks. During that time, mold did as much damage as water had already done.
Rescue of stranded victims was very slow, and as victims became more desperate, their behavior got worse.
Cities that suffer a complete collapse of law suffer more crime than rural areas. That's true whether the city is New Orleans, Los Angeles after the Rodney King riots, or Baghdad after the collapse of the Saddam regime.
Differences in character between rural folk and city folk may have something to do with it. Difference in circumstances also play a part.
As far as the government doling out money to help deal with the crisis, I'll remind us that the government has just finished sending out stimulus checks to all of us, to help us deal with the flood of debt most of us have built up over the years, and help us keep on consuming.
What should we do in this crisis, or any crisis? We should do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.
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