Category: Let's talk
So many times I have heard people talk about America as the land of opportunity, the richest, most powerful nation in the world, however, after recent events in new orleanes I can’t help wondering if opportunity only comes to those who can afford it. People were told to leave the city on Saturday night, yet all the busses and greyhounds out of the city had been cancelled, so unless you had a car, there was literally no way you could leave. The people left there were the poorest people who had nowhere else to go and even if they did, no means of getting there. And it’s taken nearly a week for a proper rescue effort to be co-ordinated. I wonder if it would have taken this long if such a tradgedy had happened in los Angeles? Where the people are mostly afluencial, and, dare I say it, white?
Do they show the mayor of New orleans on TV over there? he is a complete and utter moron!
On the front page of the news paper today there was a pictures of a parking lot full of school busses. You wouldn't have thought that Moron mayor would have used that to get people out or at least to the football stadium.
Relief efforts were just very, very unorganized. They should have been well prepared because they have known for years this could happen. I've heard New Orleans described as a bathtub waiting to be filled. It is surrounded by three large bodies of water, and they should have been more prepared for a hurricane.
Well, first of all, like I posted in another topic a while back. The rather sad fact remains that it is much harder for a poor person to break out of his/her lifestyle in the U.S. than in other countries so in fact the land of opportunity almost seems to exist almost exclusively for those with good background and expensive education. If you start out poor you have a much greater chance of remaining so in the U.S. than e.g. in Europe. This was a study covered on NPR (national public radio) a few weeks back so, yes indeed, it's questionable whether this really is the land of opportunity, it is in some senses but you really must alrady have the upper hand to take advantage of it. Wealth and opportunity is really unevenly distributed here, there's lots of wealth but it is distributred across a very minor proportion of the population and it gets ever more concentrated.
But as for the New Orelans aspect of it.
There are a lot of astonishing facts about what happened really.
a. In 2002 a most likely disaster scnearios plan was published, the 2 most likely scenarios we should be prepared for was a terrorist attack on New York (again) and a hurricane hitting New Orelans (odd). Yet in the coming years the Bush administration took away New Orelans's budget and put the majority off it into the Iraq effort and the city placed no limit on private enterprises draining the marshlands around the city for industrial purposes (the land acts like a buffer zone, absorbing additional water when necessary and the protection of that land could have helped tremendously dealing with the excess rains from the hurricane).
Also, even if this scenario has been so likely and predicted for a long time apparently no evacuation plans existed, neither from Fema (the federal emergency management agency) nor on the local city/state level. I was talking to a Louisana native over the weekend and he said that it's incredible and the governor and mayer should take a lot of responsibility for how pourly the initial response and evacuation was executed.
And I think, in the federal government's slight defense, no one realized the severity of the hurricane's impact until a few days after it struck. Initially it seemed like it had passed New Orleans (it did for the most part, that's the scary bit, had this been a direct hit there would be absolutely no city and loss of lives be in the tens of thousands) but the flooding somehow didn't get reported until Wednesday or Thursday. I think the whole affair reflects a sense of complacency amongst Americans, that this nation is so powerful that nothing wrong can happen here and they can't do no wrong abroad, that's certainly the government's stance. They have been so concentrated on foreign issues that they niglected their own national infrastructure completely. They still refuse to sign up to the Kyoto protocol on trying to slow down global warming, even if the hurricanes created by the warmer oceans are ruining the southern states (average wind speed in a hurricane has increased 50% in the last 30 yars due to the ocean surface being warmer,) up to 40% of the state's guard's peopple had been shipped off to Iraq so insufficient troops were around to deal with local emergencies, beaurocracy has hindered the shipment of aid both domestically and internationally, planes set waiting in Russia to fly emergency aid in but were never allowed to leave due to some hold ups in the U.S. government system.
Also I think the outbreak of violence and cevil war type of situation was something Americans didn't expect and still don't believe. That the great nation of the U.S. could display such cruelty and confusion was beyond them even if this is exactly what has happened in any other part of the world under similar circumstances, yes, the people of the U.S. are only human after all.
It's hard to say what happens after this, this hurricane season is far from being over and the chances of another storm hitting New Orelans are definitely existing, and it's almost certain that a powerful hurricane will hit Florida, Alabama or the Carolinas at some point this fall. At least most of the cities there are not placed under sea level with chemical factories and oil refinaries on both sides. If, in fact, the hurricane had hit directly the chemical tanks would've been split up and the chemicals would have flooded in with the water, sat on top of the water in the city and almost certainly caught fire and there would have been absolutely no escape for any person trying to get out. This could well happen next time so I really hope and pray that more careful planning and thought goes into the rebuilding of New Orelans to prevent that possibility from ever coming up in the future.
cheers
-B
It is completely reprehensible that a rich and powerful countrylike america, should be found wanting, when a hurricane descends on the most vulnerable states..there have been calls for the everyone involved with the emergency agency to be sacked which I would agree with and for those in the bush administration who saw fit to allow disabled and sick and elderly people to die they should be trid for manslaughter.
I think that America could have made a better effort to get people out of the city before the huricane hit as well as getting them out of areas which were expected to be badly affected. People have been ordered to leave now but that should have happened the moment news of the risk the huricane posed was received. I don't think there's a race issue, after all there are black people in the administration. On the news though, most of the people left behind seem to be showing little respect for the administration which was democratically elected. I don't think the democrats would have done a better job though and new that it wouldn't be long before the situation was used as a political playing card by the two parties. Obviously it was going to take time for relief to get to the areas after the huricane, because the city was flooded and you can't land planes where the ground is under water and you can't drive on submerged roads. I heard a story about busses been turned away from New Orleans but the journalist never bothered to try finding out why. I wasn't surprised. Any opportunity to jump on bandwagons and influence the thinking of people, the media will take. The only consolation is that this was the bible belt and most affected were Jesus Freaks and when I heard them all in the churches screaming and shouting like a bunch of nutcases, it was easy to understand why the rescue effort wasn't of a high standard.