(no subject)

[benlehman]

I was in New Orleans a month ago. I had butter-fried pecan pie and po' boys with Clinton Nixon, and hung out in coffee shops that were also bars. It was a great city, a slow city, and I was even fantasizing about living there someday.

It's just unreal.

Clinton, I'm glad your alive and out. I can't imagine what you must be going through right now.

Comments

[heyunyi.livejournal.com]

Yeah, unreal is exactly what I was thinking too. I was reading the news about it and I couldn't believe it was describing somewhere in the U.S.

cognitive dissonance

[(Anonymous)]

I was at the World Trade Center in August of '01. I remember not taking the time to go to the top of it since I was in a hurry. I figured I'd do it later.

A month later it was just unreal.

i

Anger

[(Anonymous)]

It's not just the lack of fresh water in really hot weather. It's not just that there are gangs of idiots roaming the streets who've decided they might as well start literally raping and pillaging. (I've heard several residents now who have described the situation as "medieval". It's not just that the rescue effort is so disorganized that different parts of the government are thwarting other parts from getting people out. It's that the head of FEMA is actually blaming people for staying behind:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/09/01/katrina.fema.brown/index.html

The notion of abject poverty and lack of transport does not seem to have occurred to this man. He takes "blame the victim" to a whole new level.

[xiombarg.livejournal.com]

There's this selfish part of me that's glad my wife and I got to see New Orleans on our honeymoon before this happened...

[funwithrage.livejournal.com]

I understand that very well; I was there in March.

[chgriffen.livejournal.com]

I'm not even sure when the last time in history was that a whole city was just wiped out. It's hard to believe. And yeah, there's a lot of blaming going around, and I am not innocent of that myself. But the most important part now is to help people out of this mess.

[(Anonymous)]

In history? Fairly recently. Take Dhaka, Bangladesh as an example. Flooding there is often as bad as it is in New Orleans now. Bam, Iran in the earthquake, only a couple of years ago. Quality of building construction makes a big difference....

In U.S. history? Doesn't happen often. Barely happens at all. San Francisco, 1906. Atlanta, 1864. Only a couple of others. Not in our lifetimes, or necessarily even in living memory.

i