August 30, 2005
Hold Off The Celebrations
Seems the happiness over New Orleans' escape from complete devastation is the predominant theme around here.
But.
Both airports are under water.
No power for 4-6 WEEKS.
Two blocks of levee have broken, so the water is still rising.
Tulane University Hospital needs to evacuate its patients, because the emergency generator is going to be flooded if the water keeps rising.
I heard an estimate that 80% of the city is flooded.
We haven't heard Louisiana's death toll yet.
It's a big mess, and it's going to take a long time to clean it up.
Posted by Jennifer at August 30, 2005 10:44 AM | TrackBackAnd, to top it off, some jerks at AP and Yahoo are labelling black people that are hunting for food as looters and white people doing the same thing as borrowers and finders. Nice to know that racism can ride right through a monster hurricane and come out the other side. Here's the MeFi thread I found this out in.
Posted by: Johnny Huh? at August 30, 2005 07:10 PMAnd if you go back and read through the whackjobs, you'll note that the French news agency provided the captions for "finding", while AP uses the terms looting.
Personally, I find most of the arguments unconvincing. One day after a hurricane and clowns are out stealing, doesn't matter if it's food or what. This bull about "free pass" or "give some slack" because they're hungry doesn't cut it.
But someone did manage to blame Bush and the Iraq war. It was so over the top that I couldn't tell if it was satire or actual nitwittery, they're often indistinguishable.
Oh yeah, and there's plenty of "real" looting going on, and one of the looters shot a cop.
The National Guard should give 12 hour notice of a new shoot-to-kill policy on looters, then enforce it just that way for one day only. The looting will stop, or at least be significantly reduced.
Posted by: Ted at August 31, 2005 05:51 AM
Jew