[Vision2020] Disaster Response

[Saundra Lund]

(I sent this earlier, but it seems to have disappeared in cyberspace -- my
apologies if this eventually shows up twice.  SL)

I've been reading the V2020 discussions about Hurricane Katrina and reading
the links provided, not to mention watching TV & reading news reports hours
each day.  I've learned a lot.

There is much to be concerned about, to be sure, about what went wrong in
the years, months, weeks, and days prior to the hurricane hitting, and I've
no doubt there's plenty of "blame" to go around on all official levels.

But, the thing that outrages me the most . . . that I just cannot wrap my
brain around . . . that I just don't believe there's *any* excuse for
whatsoever is this:  why, oh WHY, did we have people survive the hurricane
only to die in the ensuing days from DEHYDRATION, for God's sake?!?!  I
cannot fathom any reasonable excuse for this to have happened.  It is
absolutely inexplicable to me that in our great country we had TENS of
THOUSANDS of devastated people without drinking water for days on end.

(Pat Kraut seems to think that could have been avoided if people would have
just filled milk jugs with water.  I disagree:  milk jugs would have been
washed away just like everything else.  And, even if they hadn't, the
water-filled-milk jugs likely wouldn't have survived the devastation of the
hurricane.)

Others want to blame the local and state governments, and still others blame
the fed.

It seems to me the buck has to stop someplace.  When it became clear that
there were TENS of THOUSANDS of people without drinking water, maybe it
*was* the local/state governments that should have been able to address
that.

But, for whatever reasons (and there were many good ones, IMHO), they
couldn't fill that basic human need, which became apparent *very* quickly.
Once that was obvious within hours, then I do think it was the federal
government's -- OUR government's -- responsibility to do it.  I do not
believe for a heartbeat that's something the feds couldn't have done, and
done quickly, to avoid untold suffering, misery, and death.  We can put
people on the moon, but we leave our own people who have already been
devastated without water for days and days and days?!?! 

There is just no excuse.  None.  After the immediate *federal* response to
9/11, I do NOT believe for a second that it was in any way impossible to get
water to those poor people at the Superdome and Convention Center and other
areas where people were concentrated.

When you know that you have TENS of THOUSANDS of vulnerable folks without
drinking water, you MOVE.  Period.

And, you don't sit around blaming the victims, implying that the incredible
poverty that prevented many from evacuating is some explanation or excuse
for OUR failure.  Some of the comments I've read and heard sound to me an
awful lot like telling folks they should have pulled themselves up by their
boot straps before and after the hurricane.  My response is that's a little
hard to do when you're barefoot, and if ever anyone was truly barefoot, it's
those who survived Katrina  :-(

BTW, having had personal experience with the ineptitude of Homeland Security
(which included, among other things, being ordered with my child at gunpoint
back *onto* a train where they *thought* there were terrorists and bombs), I
cannot be surprised that FEMA has gone downhill after being incorporated
into that pathetic department  :-(


Saundra Lund
Moscow, ID

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do
nothing.
Edmund Burke

***** Original material contained herein is Copyright 2005, Saundra Lund.
Do not copy, forward, excerpt, or reproduce outside the Vision 2020 forum
without the express written permission of the author.*****