Hurricane Katrina and the International Response

mike2h

kudos to you necrosis!! i donated but am bascically on the physically unable to perform list otherwise i'd be there.

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GOG

Why am I wrong? Believe me, I would love to be proven wrong in this matter


And before some joker starts out: YES, I've aided and YES my country has aided, ok?



As much as I feel for the victims, in particular the ones harrassed by FELLOW CITIZENS. On the other side, I'm confused that a nation able to spend billions of dollars on a war doomed to crave massive casualties can't protect their own home territory.


And before you trash me all over, I will probably be one of those that my country wishes to send you to build your tele/IT-infra up. See you guys

Falstaff

oh for goodness sake.....

The matter of blame for the three disasters that have occured here in New Orleans rest squarely on the shoulders of the city planners, the mayor, the governer and the senator of Louisiana..
George Bush didnt have a darn thing to do with any suffering in Louisiana.....
This is not a political football....it is a terribly preventable tragedy that could have been avoided by moving the city higher on concrete piers or bunkers or foundations and moving industry to safer places. Isolated the city by more efficient means, from the water that immediately threatened them by the sea.
Again....and I say this to anyone...New Orleans generated incredible wealth....what happened to the money for disaster preparedness......

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Necrosis

I think some people need to understand the difference between federal government, and state government.

Falstaff

tis true......

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SFOSOK

no

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*Warning* - Explicit Content Preceeding



METAL!!

Pompey

I actually agree with you
If you live in a hurricane prone area and you decide to build your city below sea level you build (and maintain) dams and canals that can deal with the excess water. I feel sorry for the victims but in the end although we cant control the weather we can plan for it and Mitigate its affects.
I live in an earthquake prone are so most people have an emergency kit prepared and our important buildings are fitted with base isolators. Schools and other emergency centres have stores of canned food and medical supplies.
This disaster is the result of either bad planning or poor implementation.
America should take the Dutch up on their offer, and if they can swallow it Cubas too.

Usually Government (local or national) takes care of this sort of thing. Low taxes (and therefore lower revenues) means there is less money to invest in vital infrastructure. A low tax rate has its benefits but this is an example of its greatest disadvantage.

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One's inability to find an answer to a question does not imply that the question has no answer.

Falstaff

The ability to prepare with the available resources that New Orleans possessed even at the lowest level would have saved 140,000 people the terrible heartache and misery they endured this week.

I still feel that New Orleans was the victim first of poor and inadequate planning from the very beginning, with over 140,000 households on welfare or unable to flee from certain destruction, it seems they should have been the first to benefit from an evacuation plan...but sadly....the school buses, well over 300 just lingered.
Pompey, I have personally witnessed several terrible disasters, the Hurricane Camille that our family rode out in Biloxi when I was a wee lad. I have been snowed in for days in Montana with my grandparents, and a large earthquake in California when I was stationed onboard the U.S.S. Missouri in Long Beach... All three times my family and myself benefited from good planning and we didnt panic. But I have know since childhood, that New Orleans would suffer a biblical fate based on its location and the kind of town that it is...and that is not a cultural or racial observation, it is based on historical fact.
The city of New Orleans was destined to be destroyed by a catastrophe of some kind, because of its location, but like all major cities in our United States, it too must be reborn from terrible circumstances and become something better....or it will just die.

I am not surprised you agree with me Pompey for whatever reason I guess, I am just trying to point out the obvious...And besides it is nothing new really, people have been beating that drum for over 60 years now, at least the Army Corps of Engineers have.

I would not like to be the Mayor of New Orleans and face the undeniable truth that I had a chance to act before the storm struck and found myself overwhelmed when it did.

Just on a side note, most major ports on the west and east coast of the U.S. including Hawaii and Alaska benefit from weather and tide data derived from observation, satillites, and instruments tethered to bouys miles from shore, that way we can predict storm surges and speed of low and high pressure events that travel near or towards our respective shorelines. New Orleans lacked the very thing that would have at least informed the city fathers that a storm surge of over 20 feet high was coming long before the first few feet over the levee would have been breached.
All this modern science and data collection ability and it all really comes down to people going from door to door alerting residents and marshalling forces to carry the poor and indigent out of the affected area.

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Pompey

Like many have said, it comes down to bad planning, or the plan was not implemented properly. Better levies would have helped but the authorities should have handled the situation better. In most western countries you would expect some sort of evacuation plan to kick in, a coordinated body directing refugees and transporting out those without the means to leave by themselves. They had several days warning, if they had actually evacuated the city (rather than just telling people to run) many lives could have been saved.

I find it odd that people have directed their anger towards Washington when the fault lies largely with local government. I have little understanding of American emergency response systems but as I understand it local authorities were meant to handle it. I get the impression that the mayor is trying to deflect the blame from himself and the different institutions involved.

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One's inability to find an answer to a question does not imply that the question has no answer.

mike2h

your opinion about the mayor(&it applies to the governor) would be correct. most of this political shenanigans. they get away with this because most people do not the truth & of course they count on that & that people will not spend the time to research.

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