New Orleans Mayor: "Thousands Likely Dead"

[AuroEdge]

Cemetary Cross of Mausoleum New Orleans

Authorities all but surrendered the streets of New Orleans to floodwaters, looting
and other lawlessness Wednesday as the mayor called for a total evacuation and
warned the death toll from Hurricane Katrina could reach into the thousands.

The frightening estimate came as desperation deepened in the city, with gunfire
crackling sporadically and looters by the hundreds roaming the streets and ransacking
tiny shops and big-box stores alike with seeming impunity.

"We know there is a significant number of dead bodies in the water," and other people
dead in attics, Mayor Ray Nagin said. Asked how many, he said: "Minimum, hundreds.
Most likely, thousands."

That would make Katrina the deadliest natural disaster in the United States since
at least the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

Read Article Here
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So when is Europe and Indonesia going to send aid ?

[TyBO]

I heard about this estimate.... it's really awful. Then again, you can't always believe what people say. Yesterday CNN was trying to say that Katrina is similar in a lot of ways to Hiroshima... yeah, except in St. Louis everyones skin didn't fall off.

My prayers go out to all the families in need because of the disaster.

[SuperMegatron]

So when is Europe and Indonesia going to send aid ?

Canada already has people on the ground there. Canadains must have the fastest global disaster response team. When the hurricane hit VA two years ago in like 24 hours we had canadians out the ass in richmond.

[IiLuSiv]

My condolences.

[Ex-Cyber]

Yesterday CNN was trying to say that Katrina is similar in a lot of ways to Hiroshima

Has anyone compared it to 9/11? I tend to think that nobody will do it for fear of putting 9/11 in perspective. Heh.

[law56ker]

I heard about this estimate.... it's really awful. Then again, you can't always believe what people say. Yesterday CNN was trying to say that Katrina is similar in a lot of ways to Hiroshima... yeah, except in St. Louis everyones skin didn't fall off.

My prayers go out to all the families in need because of the disaster.

Obviously they don't mean similar in a "nuclear" way.

[mikozero]

My condolences to the people of the Gulf Coast.

about Hiroshima, it's a still bad comparison.

140,000 people died at Hiroshima, most instantly when the bomb went of and the surrounding area was heated to a temperature 10 times the surface of the sun, as a result there was very little debris as most of it was vaporised or carbonized.

it's bad, real bad, but it aint as bad as that.

So when is Europe and Indonesia going to send aid ?

why would the richest most powerful nation on Earth need aid ? (in that sense)

aid is for peoples/countries who can't fend/cope for themselves.

[SuperMegatron]

why would the richest most powerful nation on Earth need aid ? (in that sense)

aid is for peoples/countries who can't fend/cope for themselves.

We would need aid for time reasons. We are able to absorb the economic impact but we still need boots on the ground there to clean up and stuff plus we would need large numbers of electrical workers,engineers, and doctor all at once. I talked about canada all ready having people there. They have trained linesmen and engineers who are worth their weight in gold to those regions.

[mikozero]

ok, i can see the reason for certain specific personnel, (i'm actually trained in the electrical trades you mentioned) and some are heading out from various organisations from what i can gather.

but a call for aid like that usually mean donate money so NGOs can head out and supply the bear essentials (food, clean water, shelter, medical assistance) to affected people and goverments help out by supporting logistics and supplying further aid from state aid budgets (and, if needed, additional forms of long term support like economic assistance).

the US shouldn't need outside help in relation to things like that.

i get the feeling AuroEdge was just being tetchy (and thats me being polite). seriously, what could the people of Indonesia (which i take it is a reference to the tsunami and the aid they received due to that) possibly give to help the United States that it wouldn't already have ?

imo if any questions need to be asked about this relief effort it's not about the lack foreign aid but about the lack of coordinated relief from inside the nation itself.

the people of New Orleans (that are still there) are not asking about lack of help from Europe or Indonesia on my TV screen they're asking about the lack of help from their local, state, neighbouring states and federal government. (and i sat up late last night to catch the CBS/ABC evening news on Freeview so i'm not talking just about the European news media btw)

[SuperMegatron]

"According to the White House, about 90,000 sq miles (234,000 sq km) has been affected by the hurricane - an area roughly the size of the UK"

Man that a huge area I had no idea there was that much damage. The economy will likely hit a slump from this.

[OneThirty8]

I find it absolutely disgusting that our government is taking so long to get their act together. We need to get those people out of there immediately. We need to get these people food, water and medicine immediately. We don't simply need Bush asking his daddy and Clinton to ask for donations. We need Bush himself to coordinate the resources the government has to get help where it is needed. He's allegedly our leader, so the people need to be able to look to him as a leader. Instead, he finished his vacation, Asshole. I can't stand to see his smirking face on television anymore.

[toastman]

Have you seen New Orleans? Have you heard the stories? This is a massive undertaking. There are already busses that are shipping people from the Superdome to the Astrodome in Houston, and rescue personel have been trying to find survivors but have been halted because people started shooting at them.
Relief vehicles have been held up at gunpoint.
New Orleans is anarchy at the moment. It will take a lot of time and some military force to get the city back under control, much less back to normal.

[IiLuSiv]

Jesus.

It makes me sick how ignorant the people are in New Orleans, not all people, but those who didn't leave before the storm are ruining things for their counterparts.

Shooting at helicopters, rapes in the Superdome, armed robberies of relief vehicles, even NURSES! What good is money, when there is no power and nothing to buy?

To think a lot of these people are doing this at the same time as being helped, disrupting the efforts themselves and then taking advantage of them. I'd worry if a lot of these refugees were going to my city, while most people in this situation are genuinely in need of help many, many will just spread their crime problem elsewhere.

Best of luck to all the people in New Orleans who genuinely need help.

[OneThirty8]

Have you seen New Orleans? Have you heard the stories? This is a massive undertaking. There are already busses that are shipping people from the Superdome to the Astrodome in Houston, and rescue personel have been trying to find survivors but have been halted because people started shooting at them.
Relief vehicles have been held up at gunpoint.
New Orleans is anarchy at the moment. It will take a lot of time and some military force to get the city back under control, much less back to normal.

I have been watching the news. I understand that this is a desparate situation, and while some efforts are being made, it doesn't seem like enough is being done, and the reports I have seen make me feel like there is a lack of coordination. Bush finishing his vacation at the ranch sickens me. Learning on the news that there is nobody "in charge" at the superdome, that people are stuck in hospitals that are literally falling apart, it's just something I can't stand to see. We need more equipment, more people (especially security people, because of the shootings you mentioned)... I know stuff is being done. There just needs to be more of it, and it needs to be orchestrated much better than what I've been lead to believe is the case.

[IiLuSiv]

Amazing.

While all this goes on the President finishes his vacation.

[mikozero]

Terry Ebbert, head of New Orleans's emergency operations, said the response from the Federal Emergency Management Agency was inadequate and that Louisiana officials have been overwhelmed.

"This is a national disgrace. FEMA has been here three days, yet there is no command and control," Ebbert told the Associated Press as he watched refugees evacuate the Superdome yesterday. "We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can't bail out the city of New Orleans. We have got a mayor who has been pushing and asking, but we're not getting supplies."

source -
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/02/politics/02bush.html

(just the one i pulled of Google news since i heard the quote on BBC news 24)

there's also this

Troops told 'shoot to kill' in New Orleans

source -
http://today.reuters.com/investing/fina ... A-KILL.XML

[Ex-Cyber]

It's disturbingly starting to look like the administration's damage control spin on this is to blame the victims:

The critical thing was to get people out of there before the disaster, Some people chose not to obey that order. That was a mistake on their part.

(widely reported from NBC's "The Today Show", transcript seems unavailable yet)

Unfortunately, [the high death toll is] going to be attributable a lot to people who did not heed the advance warnings,

I don't make judgments about why people chose not to leave but, you know, there was a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans,

So, we've got to figure out some way to convince people that whenever warnings go out it's for their own good, Now, I don't want to second guess why they did that.

Source

So we've got two high-profile administration officials throwing the same meme out, with one of them doing it repeatedly. I highly doubt this is a coincidence, but it remains to be seen whether the administration will own up to it.

For those who don't see what's wrong with this notion, consider that a lot of urban poor don't own cars (often a huge unnecessary expense when you live and work in the city) and live paycheck-to-paycheck so they can't readily afford other methods of long-distance transit. Not to mention that there were gas shortages because of so many people trying to leave town, so even those who could afford it may not have been able to make it in time.

[AuroEdge]

It's disturbingly starting to look like the administration's damage control spin on this is to blame the victims:

The critical thing was to get people out of there before the disaster, Some people chose not to obey that order. That was a mistake on their part.

(widely reported from NBC's "The Today Show", transcript seems unavailable yet)

Unfortunately, [the high death toll is] going to be attributable a lot to people who did not heed the advance warnings,

I don't make judgments about why people chose not to leave but, you know, there was a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans,

So, we've got to figure out some way to convince people that whenever warnings go out it's for their own good, Now, I don't want to second guess why they did that.

Source

So we've got two high-profile administration officials throwing the same meme out, with one of them doing it repeatedly. I highly doubt this is a coincidence, but it remains to be seen whether the administration will own up to it.

For those who don't see what's wrong with this notion, consider that a lot of urban poor don't own cars (often a huge unnecessary expense when you live and work in the city) and live paycheck-to-paycheck so they can't readily afford other methods of long-distance transit. Not to mention that there were gas shortages because of so many people trying to leave town, so even those who could afford it may not have been able to make it in time.

Had these people without cars decided to leave Sunday morning, they could've easily walked miles away from New Orleans. If they're too poor to afford food, it's one of those things that can't really be helped. It wouldn't take that much money to get food and what have you. That may sound "extreme" or like something you'd never do, but if I were in the poverty stricken peoples' shoes I would've done anything to get out of there. I'm sure everybody in the city knew the hurricane was coming.

[Ex-Cyber]

How many miles would they have had to walk to get somewhere that's above sea level?

[SuperMegatron]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4207202.stm
now there is explosions there from chemical plants. This is a huge mess. Relief workers are scared to go there because the people in the area are violent now, there isnt power or food, and they astrodome is full and there is no place left to take these people.