Yep. The evaculation of folks in harm's way of Katrina was a glowing success. The loss of life is minimal considering this was the greatest natural disaster to ever strike this country, yet all we hear is about what a failure the government response was.
Over 80 per cent of New Orleans residents were evacuated prior to the flooding and so were the coastal areas of MS and AL. But the successful evacuation is not reported by the media, because it's good news. And the folks responsible for it weren't a government or politcal agency. They were good folks like you and me who took responsibility for themselves and their families and didn't rely on a 'mommy government' to take care of them.
There in lies the lesson of Katrina. There is nothing wrong with government programs and aid to the victims of natural tragedies, but those who rely on government instead of themselves in any aspect of their lives will always be short-changed.
Let us think about a city where the vast majority of the people living there do not own cars, never have, and never will ,no matter what thier social status is. The only real mass transit they have is the subway which will not even get you out of the city!
Remember 9-11? Physically there was only a very tiny portion of New York city effected by it, yet the entire city grid locked and that was only due to the folks who commute in and out of the city every day and not the folks who live there.
Do you think New York city could be evacuated as quickly as N.O.? Oh yea, I am not talking about just simply getting them out of the city, but a safe distance from the city.
If it failed would you blame the residents of New York city because they did not own thier own transportation?
The evacuation of NO was a disgrace to the people of La. that IMO falls squarely on the shoulders of the Mayor and Governor because the time and the capability was there to evacuate.
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The Tazman aka Martin Price
Proud father of a Devil Dog
I thought a moderator's job was to keep threads on topic instead of throwing them off, but what the heck do I know? If this isn't an apples and oranges analogy, I don't know what is.
The vast majority of people in NO do own cars and took the responsibility to get themselves and their families out of harm's way. They deserve some credit for having the good sense to do so. Even though MS and AL hardly get mentioned, their citizens did the same.
But I'll bite on your canard, Mr. Moderator. Given five-days warning that an impending disaster was headed toward NYC, I'd bet that Mayor Guiliani would have had it evacuated. I'd also bet that Mayor Bloomberg can do the same.
Iffie, Until you come straight with me, we got nuthin to talk about.
underdog I was not deviating from the topic at all, simply throwing a spin on it. It was a none fact that there were thousands of people in NO with no transportation, in a mock disaster that was run by N.O., the Mayor, the president of NO's city council, and one of the big shots from the Red Cross released a report and a DVD that acknowledged that basically in a nut shell those without transportation were simply on thier own.
Do you blame the people who died in nursing homes, the disabled folks, the retirees living on a fixed income?
Do you blame the children whose parents were idiots or dirt bags?
BTW why the anomosity towards mods? Have I treated you unfairly our done anything to earn your ire?
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The Tazman aka Martin Price
Proud father of a Devil Dog
Given five-days warning that an impending disaster was headed toward NYC,
The people of NO didn't have five days. When the storm was headed for Flordia there was no one that thought it was going to go into the G .o.M. and strenghten the way it did. That was Thrusday night
In late afternoon, Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2005, the National Weather Service began tracking a tropical depression in the Atlantic about 175 miles southeast of the Bahamas. Moving quickly, it turned west and crossed into southern Florida two days later as a Category 1 hurricane, bringing with it almost a foot of rain. Now known as Katrina, it entered the Gulf of Mexico, where it quickly picked up speed and intensity from the warmer water. By Saturday evening, it was a Category 3 hurricane, and there was no doubt it would inflict significant damage when it hit the Gulf Coast. By mid-morning, Sunday, Aug. 28, with winds of 175 miles per hour, about 250 miles from the Mississippi River, it became a Category 5 hurricane, the most intense on the Saffir"“Simpson scale. In more than a century of recording hurricanes, Katrina was only the fourth with that much force to be so close to the American shore. No longer was it a question of whether or not it would hit the Gulf Coast, it was with how much intensity. The target was New Orleans.
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