very sad and troublesome, from wiekbe
Poor, sick, aged left in the lurch
Leonard Witt - For the Journal-Constitution
Thursday, September 1, 2005
Each
time you hear a federal, state or city official explain what he or she
is doing to help New Orleans, consider the opening paragraphs of a July
24 story in the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
"City, state and
federal emergency officials are preparing to give the poorest of New
Orleans' poor a historically blunt message: In the event of a major
hurricane, you're on your own."
The story continues:
"In
scripted appearances being recorded now, officials such as Mayor Ray
Nagin, local Red Cross Executive Director Kay Wilkins and City Council
President Oliver Thomas drive home the word that the city does not have
the resources to move out of harm's way an estimated 134,000 people
without transportation."
The officials made those statements
fully knowing that those 134,000 people were very likely to end up in
dire circumstances or even die.
Here is what National Geographic
magazine wrote in an article published in October 2004 about a possible
hurricane scenario for New Orleans:
"The Federal Emergency
Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the
most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in
California or a terrorist attack on New York City. Even the Red Cross
no longer opens hurricane shelters in the city, claiming the risk to
its workers is too great."
In that article National Geographic
predicted with eerie accuracy that more than a million people would
evacuate, but some 200,000 would remain, including "the carless, the
homeless, the aged and infirm."
The New Orleans Times-Picayune ran its own series in 2002 in which it wrote:
"If
enough water from Lake Pontchartrain topped the levee system along its
south shore, the result would be apocalyptic. Whoever remained in the
city would be at grave risk. According to the American Red Cross, a
likely death toll would be between 25,000 and 100,000 people, dwarfing
estimated death tolls for other natural disasters and all but the most
nightmarish potential terrorist attacks. Tens of thousands more would
be stranded on rooftops and high ground, awaiting rescue that could
take days or longer. They would face thirst, hunger and exposure to
toxic chemicals."
And yet apparently there was no emergency plan and no resources to evacuate "the carless, the homeless, the aged and infirm."
In
this era when we are a nation at risk of terrorism and natural
disasters, we can only hope that what is happening in New Orleans is
not built into the fabric of our national homeland security policy. We
should provide security for everyone, including the poor, aged and
infirm.
We have the resources. On Wednesday, it seems FEMA found
475 buses to help with the belated evacuation effort. Unfortunately,
when it comes to looking after the carless, homeless, the aged and
infirm in our country, we --- in our quest to become an ownership
society --- seemed to have allowed our good senses, good will and
compassion to go on vacation.
-- Leonard Witt is the Robert D. Fowler Distinguished Chair in Communication at Kennesaw State University.