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Hurricane Katrina: The Aftermath

stosh

Darth Bailer
Jul 20, 2001
22,238
393
NY
Westy said:
There are still people in the country that have to do that everyday, even without hurricanes. You need to get out more.
Must you bash me at every turn....
 

N8 v2.0

Not the sharpest tool in the shed
Oct 18, 2002
11,003
149
The Cleft of Venus
MMike said:
Nice to see a crisis bringing out the best in people....

I'm really torn between feeling sorry for the people who are left down there and feeling like they deserve what they are going through because they ignored the warnings to the the hell out! They had a week to bail.
 

firetoole

duch bag
Nov 19, 2004
1,910
0
Wooo Tulips!!!!
N8 said:
I'm really torn between feeling sorry for the people who are left down there and feeling like they deserve what they are going through because they ignored the warnings to the the hell out! They had a week to bail.
most of the people stuck are dirt poor ( the majority of NO)couldn't afford to leave

but you could say that's what you get for living in a bowl next to water,
I was down there last year and I remember being downtown by the water on a road that was lower than the water and thinking this seems like a really bad idea.
 

N8 v2.0

Not the sharpest tool in the shed
Oct 18, 2002
11,003
149
The Cleft of Venus
firetoole said:
most of the people stuck are dirt poor ( the majority of NO)couldn't afford to leave

but you could say that's what you get for living in a bowl next to water,
I was down there last year and I remember being downtown by the water on a road that was lower than the water and thinking this seems like a really bad idea.

While there are some 'poor,' the majority of people could have left but chose to stay...


Are you sure you want to go down there?
 
J

JRB

Guest
How are these fvckers any better than the insurgents in Iraq??? Jesus.
 

N8 v2.0

Not the sharpest tool in the shed
Oct 18, 2002
11,003
149
The Cleft of Venus
firetoole said:
I got activated (IM on a FEMA task force) so I have to go
not that I wouldn't go anyway

Better buy a bullet proof vest or some kind of body armor. I'm serious. Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.
 

firetoole

duch bag
Nov 19, 2004
1,910
0
Wooo Tulips!!!!
N8 said:
Better buy a bullet proof vest or some kind of body armor. I'm serious. Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.
that's funny because my cop friend called me last night to make me take his extra vest and gun it looks like I may take him up on it :monkey:
 

N8 v2.0

Not the sharpest tool in the shed
Oct 18, 2002
11,003
149
The Cleft of Venus
There is a major concern within the state of LA about the loss of New Orleans as a tax base for the state. Estimates are that some 60%+ of the state's taxes some from that area.
 

narlus

Eastcoast Softcore
Staff member
Nov 7, 2001
24,658
63
behind the viewfinder
N8 said:
There is a major concern within the state of LA about the loss of New Orleans as a tax base for the state. Estimates are that some 60%+ of the state's taxes some from that area.
the governor should take a page out of bush's playbook and cut taxes, as an economic stimulus.

right?
 

chicodude

The Spooninator
Mar 28, 2004
1,054
2
Paradise
Skookum said:
Man i just saw an interview on CNN, this guy told a story to an interviewer of how he lost his wife. He was losing his grip to her as she was getting pulled away she was telling him to take care of the kids. He was crying, the interviewer was crying while asking question, it damn near made me cry when he said he didn't have no where to go.

I saw the same thing in my econ class, And I almost got teary eyed too, So sad...
 

N8 v2.0

Not the sharpest tool in the shed
Oct 18, 2002
11,003
149
The Cleft of Venus
Battle for New Orleans




Evacuation Disrupted Amid Fires, Gunshots
Sep 01 10:26 AM US/Eastern
By ADAM NOSSITER
Associated Press Writer


NEW ORLEANS-Gunfire and arson blazes disrupted the evacuation of 25,000 people from the Superdome on Thursday, as National Guardsmen in armored vehicles poured into New Orleans to help restore order across the increasingly lawless and desperate city.

An additional 10,000 National Guard troops from across the country were ordered into the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast to shore up security, rescue and relief operations in Katrina's wake. That brought the number of troops dedicated to the effort to more than 28,000, in what may be the biggest military response to a natural disaster in U.S. history.

"The truth is, a terrible tragedy like this brings out the best in most people, brings out the worst in some people," said Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour on NBC's "Today" show. "We're trying to deal with looters as ruthlessly as we can get our hands on them."

The first of hundreds of busloads of people evacuated from the hot and stinking Louisiana Superdome arrived early Thursday at their new temporary home _ another sports arena, the Houston Astrodome, 350 miles away.

But the ambulance service in charge of taking the sick and injured from the Superdome suspended flights after a shot was reported fired at a military helicopter. Richard Zuschlag, chief of Acadian Ambulance, said it had become too dangerous for his pilots.

The military, which was overseeing the removal of the able-bodied by buses, continued the ground evacuation without interruption, said National Guard Lt. Col. Pete Schneider. But Schneider said fires set outside the Superdome were making it difficult for buses to get close enough to pick people up.

President Bush urged a crackdown on the looting and other lawlessness that have spread through New Orleans.

"I think there ought to be zero tolerance of people breaking the law during an emergency such as this _ whether it be looting, or price gouging at the gasoline pump, or taking advantage of charitable giving or insurance fraud," Bush said. "And I've made that clear to our attorney general. The citizens ought to be working together."

On Wednesday, Mayor Ray Nagin offered the most startling estimate yet of the magnitude of the disaster: Asked how many people died in New Orleans, he said: "Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands." The death toll has already reached at least 110 in Mississippi.

If the estimate proves correct, it would make Katrina the worst natural disaster in the United States since at least the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, which was blamed for anywhere from about 500 to 6,000 deaths. Katrina would also be the nation's deadliest hurricane since 1900, when a storm in Galveston, Texas, killed between 6,000 and 12,000 people.

Nagin called for a total evacuation of New Orleans, saying the city had become uninhabitable for the 50,000 to 100,000 who remained behind after the city of nearly a half-million people was ordered cleared out over the weekend, before Katrina blasted the Gulf Coast with 145-mph winds.

The mayor said that it will be two or three months before the city is functioning again and that people would not be allowed back into their homes for at least a month or two.

"We need an effort of 9-11 proportions," former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial, now president of the Urban League, said on NBC's "Today" show. "So many of the people who did not evacuate, could not evacuate for whatever reason. They are people who are African-American mostly but not completely, and people who were of little or limited economic means. They are the folks, we've got to get them out of there."

"A great American city is fighting for its life," he added. "We must rebuild New Orleans, the city that gave us jazz, and music, and multiculturalism."

With New Orleans sinking deeper into desperation, Nagin ordered virtually the entire police force to abandon search-and-rescue efforts Wednesday and stop the increasingly brazen thieves.

"They are starting to get closer to heavily populated areas _ hotels, hospitals, and we're going to stop it right now," Nagin said.

In a sign of growing lawlessness, Tenet HealthCare Corp. asked authorities late Wednesday to help evacuate a fully functioning hospital in Gretna after a supply truck carrying food, water and medical supplies was held up at gunpoint.

"There are physical threats to safety from roving bands of armed individuals with weapons who are threatening the safety of the hospital," said spokesman Steven Campanini. He estimated there were 350 employees in the hospital and between 125 to 150 patients.

Tempers flared elsewhere across the devastated region. Police said a man in Hattiesburg, Miss., fatally shot his sister in the head over a bag of ice. Dozens of carjackings were reported, including a nursing home bus. One officer was shot in the head and a looter was wounded in a shootout. Both were expected to survive.

Looters used garbage cans and inflatable mattresses to float away with food, clothes, TV sets _ even guns. Outside one pharmacy, thieves commandeered a forklift and used it to push up the storm shutters and break through the glass. The driver of a nursing-home bus surrendered the vehicle to thugs after being threatened.

Hundreds of people wandered up and down shattered Interstate 10 _ the only major freeway leading into New Orleans from the east _ pushing shopping carts, laundry racks, anything they could find to carry their belongings.

On some of the few roads that were still open, people waved at passing cars with empty water jugs, begging for relief. Hundreds of people appeared to have spent the night on a crippled highway.

The floodwaters streamed into the city's streets from two levee breaks near Lake Pontchartrain a day after New Orleans thought it had escaped catastrophic damage from Katrina. The floodwaters covered 80 percent of the city, in some areas 20 feet deep, in a reddish-brown soup of sewage, gasoline and garbage.

The Army Corps of Engineers said it planned to use heavy-duty Chinook helicopters to drop 15,000-pound bags of sand and stone into a 500- foot gap in the failed floodwall.

But the agency said it was having trouble getting the sandbags and dozens of 15-foot highway barriers to the site because the city's waterways were blocked by loose barges, boats and large debris.

The full magnitude of the disaster had been unclear for days _ in part, because some areas in both coastal Mississippi and Louisiana are still unreachable, but also because authorities' first priority has been reaching the living.

In Mississippi, for example, ambulances roamed through the passable streets of devastated places such as Biloxi, Gulfport, Waveland and Bay St. Louis, in some cases speeding past corpses in hopes of saving people trapped in flooded and crumbled buildings.