:: W4B photography's companion blog ::

:: Saturday, September 03, 2005 ::

See you in September...
Misc: OK. Like most people in North America, this week I have been transfixed by watching the pour souls in The Gulf Coast sections of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama who have been hammered by Katrina. The devastation and destruction - and yes the ultimate body counts - is on a scale not seen on the continent before. A whole city flooded with no where for the water to go because it is below sea level. Below. Sea. Level. Water draining in, but not out. How do you repair that. Sure, the US Army corps of engineers can repair the huge breaks in the levee. The massive pumps can empty the water out - likely closer to Christmas at this point. And then what? The buildings that have had their foundations underwater for months are going to be structurally sound? Granted the housed will probably have to all be flattened and rebuilt. But what of the downtown core. What of the infrastructure.

And where is the help? You see it the roof top rescues of stranded home owners in New Orleans. But the talking heads get to Mobile or Biloxi and they say there are Red Cross stations, yet they don't videotape them. That is a constant theme. There is help around, you just need to find it. Tell them. If you have been there, say it is at the following intersections... Sure a lot of people won't have means of hearing your voice, but someone will and word will get around slowly.

Shooting at rescue helicopters? Those folks, if caught, need to be beaucoup punished. I know it is some sort of post apocalyptic nightmare down in the big easy, but how can anyone think that they will get away with stuff like that without the military or swat teams clearing them out with... minimal negotiations. If you were too dumb and or too stupid to leave that is not a reason to loot big screen TVs. I don't think anyone would fault you stealing essentials. But really. You guys are going to get it and I hope it is swiftly. There are also those who could not leave, the poorest of the poor and the invalid. And I am not directing that comment at them or lumping everyone together. They should have been forced to leave by the goverment and helped to do so. Government at some level failed them.

And now for a sarcastic comment. If CNN can transmit out of every affected area and fly over and so on, why can't there be more rescuing and evacuating going on. Not by the media, by the folks who should be sent there to do it. I did see that when an ABC crew in a boat was doing a piece and came across a family and contacted some swift water rescue teams from California in to help, but where is everyone. Is it just the sheer magnitude of it all that make the huge efforts be a drop in the bucket? Are all the troops and support in Iraq as some pundits on the left argue? Perhaps, and those of us not there can be swift to judge when not in the thick of it.

I would just like the work to turn up a few dozen notches and get underway on a massive, unquestioning scale. There should be only one thing going on in the US right now and that is helping those folks. Leave the he said /she said till later. I hope the short attention span of the average American doesn't lead them to forget about their southern cousins in a few weeks when it will still be an aweful situation. Or in a few months when it starts to get colder and the tens of thousands who are now homeless are on the streets of whatever city they have landed on. And perhaps harshly, someone is going to have to decide whether the city should be rebuilt or closed forever. This could, after all, happen again. I say close the city. No modern civilization would build in such a location just because it can. We are not talking about an outpost from the 1800s. Building on a flood plain, when the whole city is one. How does someone get a permit for that? Close it, cry, bury the dead, move on. It would cost billions to relocate, but it is going to cost billions more than that to get New Orleans back on her feet again.

I think that squirril summed it up best when it was giving his spin on the aftermath of the disaster, about the talking heads and the ratings and the media. I will leave it at that. ** seriously strong language, so don't play this at f***ing work. K?

Carpe Diem

:: Mike Wood 10:23 [+] :: 1 comments
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1 Comments:

Just in case you haven't heard, Jo had a baby girl... pics are on my site... spaces.msn.com/members/simplymagik

By  Karen, at 9:11 AM  

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