--People had advance warning and didn't leave.
--It's 6 feet under sea level and sinking at 3 FT per centuary.
--Rebuilding is somewhat pointless if you ask me.
'It will take many years and a lot of money' yeah, it will. And then in 6 years there will be another huricane and this will happen all over again, except worse due to the fact that there will be more flooding. (see note about sinking rate).
'What is with you people? Who cares about semantics and whether or not we could have changed the past.'
'As a New Yorker who saw the outpouring of this nation during 2001, I have to say I'm dismayed by the lack of sympathy we are seeing here.'
Anyone care to make sense of that for me please?
--Looting, shooting, etc.
Anyone that shoots at a rescue helecopter or starts looting junk from stores should just be shot on sight.
Seriously, why rescue the people that are trying to make a bad situation worse.
--Why were't there busses bussing people out before the hurricane struck?
Seems to me that the logical sequence of events is as such:
-OMFG HURRICANE COMING!!
-Tell people to get out now.
-Get busses down there to get people out.
-Continue to bus people out after hurricane.
Instead of waiting until it strikes, jamming tons of people in the superdome, then getting people bussed out.
Bush keeps saying 'we are working with local, state, federal governments to manage the situation. There will be people to manage the situation. We have a good management team. etc.'
Apparently no one could watch the damn weather channel and see this hurricane and put 2 and 2 together.
With that said, my heart goes out to all of the victims and their families of the hurricane disaster. (except for the ones insiting riots and shooting at rescue helicopters)."
I have been seeing this sort of thing all over the internet since I regained internet access following Hurricane Katrina... but this particular comment from the website This is Broken is probably the best representative sample I have run across so far.
The largest problem with the poster's comments is that it is based on a belief that whenver someone spoke of the destruction of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast -- that they were necessarily speaking of New Orleans alone. From the assumption that Katrina was all about and only about New Orleans -- plenty of idiotic conclusions can be drawn.
"People had advance warning and didn't leave."
It amazes me that the same folks who yammer on and on about the deadly hurricane heading straight for New Orleans, LA never consider the fact that if we were told for 4 days that a deadly hurricane was heading straight for New Orleans, LA then we were not warned that it was actually heading for the coast of Mississippi. That aside -- I'm mostly irked with the general sense that evacuation is simple. Just load up the car and take off! With 1 million other people... In an area where the vast majority of available hotel rooms are... guess!.. on the coast.
When you live 93 miles from a major city that is in the process of being totally evacuated... and you're aware that a good chunk of those evacuees are going to end up in the 70,000 hotel rooms that you would otherwise have considered evacuating to... It's not that simple.
Okay - so I've beaten that dead horse enough already.
I'll get to the point... If everyone had left... would there not have been an aftermath? Oh wait -- I've beaten that dead horse enough too.
I can only assume that this person is solely referring to folks trapped in the Superdome and on rooftops in the wake of the storm. So what he is actually saying is 'Those people who were trapped and in need of rescue do not deserve to be rescued because I think they should have just left." Heartwarming thought.
"It's 6 feet under sea level and sinking at 3 FT per centuary."
Again a reference to New Orleans alone. My house is 14 feet above sea-level. As a matter of fact, the average elevation in Pascagoula is 16 feet. Gulfport and Biloxi's elevations are listed at 25 feet above sea-level. And the Bay/Waveland area is at an average of 17 feet above sea-level.
We are also not sinking at an alarming rate... And I don't know what a centuary is - so I can't address it anyway.
Even the reference to New Orelans itself is inaccurate. The average elevation of the New Orleans area is 11 feet above sea-level. There are, indeed, parts of the city that lie below sea-level... but the continual references to the entire area as being well beneath sea-level are driving me batty.
To put it in perspective -- how about some other areas with similar elevations?:
Miami, FL: 11 feet
Washington, DC: 18 feet
Virginia Beach, VA: 15 feet
Boston, MA: 20 feet
Okay so sea-level, shcmee-level... If you live near the sea... You're probably going to be living closer to sea-level than someone who lives on atop a mountain. Point taken.
"Rebuilding is somewhat pointless if you ask me."
And it's a good thing we didn't ask you.
"And then in 6 years there will be another huricane and this will happen all over again, except worse due to the fact that there will be more flooding."
Wow.. who needs the NHC? This guy's obviously got severe weather prediction down. Tell you what -- I'll move in six years then! But seriously... to me, this is the equivalent of not making your bed in the morning since you'll just be sleeping in it again that night. If this attitude were actually as prevalent as such internet comments have made it seem -- then the word 'rebuild' should have never entered our vocabularies.
If I insisted on living in an area that was sure to get smacked with something like a Katrina every six years -- then and only then would I understand this sentiment. Katrina has not happened here before in recorded memory. We have hurricanes at the rate of possibly a handful in a lifetime -- if you're unlucky. Most of those are nothing more than giant thunderstorms (minus the thunder). You rake your yard - have a few shingles put on your roof... and you go on about your business.
Again -- the public at large has absolutely no concept of the extent of this disaster. This is unprecedented.
From www.dictionary.com:
un·prec·e·dent·ed
P Pronunciation Key (
n-pr
s
-dn
td)adj. Having no previous example
I understand the poster's frustration with the reports coming out of the area about the Superdome and idle buses. But I would like to point out that this post was made in reponse to a previous poster's request for help for New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Basing the entire response on what little he or she has apparently seen on the national news about only one of the cities affected is inexcusable -- considering the overall tone of the comment.
I have been reading these comments -- and getting pretty angry about them -- for months now. I have a hard time excusing the ignorance of some people -- people who obviously have access to a wealth of information (these are comments posted on the internet, correct?) that they choose to not use before making ridiculous comments regarding things about which they know very little.
Perhaps these are people who are so dissatisfied with their lives that they can find no room for compassion for others. Perhaps they are so blinded by their own interests that they don't find the facts surrounding others' circumstances important enough to consider. Or perhaps blaming victims for the tragedies that befall them make them feel better about the bad decisions they have made in life.
Or maybe they just don't care.
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