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September 01, 2005
Thoughts about New Orleans
This hurricane and New Orleans thing has really got me down. Time for some writing therapy.
[CNN.com - Sniper fire halts hospital evacuation - Sep 1, 2005
] In the wake of the recent 3rd world country-like events in New Orleans, one is left to wonder: where is the Army or the National Guard? I mean if we can't put 10,000 battle ready troops with 2 weeks of supplies in New Orleans within 6 hours of when we want them there, then what has our army come to? Are all of our quick response teams in Iraq? Europe? Japan? What if the Canadians attack over the border one day, are we going to take 2-4 days to get a few helicopters and humvees there to pluck citizens off their rooftops while we watch the troops pour over the line? (A little far fetched, but now that there's no Soviet threat, you have to think up different scenarios).
[Random observations on Hurricane Katrina] And you'd think that democrats would at least have the decency to wait until they finish finding and burying the dead before they get back on the Bush-is-a-weanie-and-we-hate-him bandwagon. I suppose the next thing we will hear is that Katrina and the flood are the result of a Republican conspiracy (orchestrated by Karl Rove of course) to steer the debate away from the war in Iraq and create a smokescreen for the energy crisis. The flood especialy. How do you think the levee breach started? It must have been high-level White House operatives under the direction of Rove himself. Let's deal with the crisis first (even though the response has seemed kind of weak from where I sit in my air conditioned, dry, basement) then start pointing partisan fingers later.
I was a little surprised to see questions like: how can IT type people employ their unique skills in this situation? How can blogs help in disasters? I was surprised because I thought it was obvoius that the answer is a resounding "your skills are useless, send money if you aren't local and get a shovel for the sandbags if you are" I think once New Orleans gets things like, say, electricity or maybe even clean water going again, then we might start thinking about blogs and websites there. My blog isn't very functional without power and that seems to be an issue in New Orleans, especially for the hospitals??!
Finally, New Orleans doesn't seem to have a coherent plan for how to deal with this disaster. The city has a lake on one side and a river on the other and it sits BELOW both of them. Seems like spending some time practicing and writing a disaster plan for the "levee break" scenario might have been a good idea. This is either a great example of man's hubris in the battle of technology v. nature or its an incredibly inept execution of a poor plan.
Ah, I feel a little better already. I feel almost as bad as I did on 9/11, 9/12 etc watching all the horific news on TV. So I had to limit my intake of new TV for a while. Too bad college football doesn't start til Saturday (and I will be at a wedding for my team's first game to top it off).
Posted by jones at September 1, 2005 06:45 PM
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