Man. Reading about the situation in Louisiana and Mississippi is extremely depressing, but like most other depressing things (Crimelibrary, Addicted to Hate, things like that), I cannot stop. One news report I read earlier today mentioned that they are not allowing dogs onto the evacuation buses, and a little boy apparently cried until he vomited after being parted with his dear Snowball. There are other reports about rapes in the bathrooms of the Superdome, roving gangs of armed looters, etc. I can -kind- of understand the mentality behind the looters. Sure, it’s not a very nice thing to do in a crisis situation, screwing over your neighbor who has lost just about everything. But when you are already living in poverty, and have lost what little you did have overnight, with very little chance of surviving the next few days – I can see the sort of thought process that goes through someone’s mind when they grab something that’s not necessarily needed for subsistence. Well, maybe not a big-screen TV, or designer stilettos, but I don’t see anything inherently harmful about swiping a few cases of beer. I imagine that in this situation, stranded with little hope for days with no water and food – alcohol might very well be necessary.
I can’t explain the rapes, though. What is wrong with people?
Now people have been quick to pin the blame on the victims themselves for not evacuating in time, especially when the mayor declared it mandatory. Granted there are many who decided to stay, tired of what they saw as the Weather Service crying wolf too many times – those who survived previous hurricanes with dire warnings attached to them, even the deadly Camille. In the NYT today, a reporter interviewed a woman who was looking for her mother. The mother had apparently never forgiven her daughter for making the old woman evacuate for Hurricane Ivan, which ended up doing very little damage to her area. Later in the day, they found the mother trapped inside her house, dead. I know evacuation is a hassle and all, but would it really have been that hard? Especially for a Cat 5 hurricane?
But what worries me is the people who couldn’t evacuate, who had no way of doing so, because they had no means of transportation, nowhere to go. These people now are in the best case scenario, trapped in the hot, human-waste smelling Superdome with no food and with several thousand other people in various states of panic. In the worst case scenario, they are trapped inside their homes and dead or dying. Most of them are minorities – New Orleans’ population is something like 75% African-American, I heard, and many of the people in the photos I’m seeing of the wreckage are African-American. I got off the phone with my dad, who said that NOLA has the second largest Vietnamese immigrant population after Texas. I asked him if he thought they would have evacuated, and he said no, most likely they would have stuck around to protect their goods and belongings from looting. Makes sense. My dad himself is the type of person that sleeps through tornado warnings, which frustrated me to no end as an impressionable, easily frightened child. Likely, if he were living in the area, he too would have stayed and gotten washed away by the storm.
The more I read, the more nightmarish the whole thing seems. I really wish I could do more than just donate this week’s work-study salary to the Red Cross. I’ve heard of students at other universities getting excused for a month from classes to go down and help with the relief effort. Our university is advising us to just donate, however, and let the trained experts handle the situation. Hope that little bit helps.
- edit – Found this Livejournal by the staff running the Something Awful servers in the middle of New Orleans. These are updates from inside the city, not filtered through the media, and probably more accurate than most news coverage there!
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