Never gain
09/21/2008 17:48
September
21, 2008
> NY Times Editorial
> "Never Again"
>
> Hurricane Gustav gave the state of Louisiana a test for which it had
> three years to prepare. There were thousands of poor, sick, disabled
> and elderly people who could not get out on their own. They needed to
> be rescued with dispatch, and sheltered in safety and dignity.
>
> One simple test. The state flunked.
>
> Three years to the week after Hurricane Katrina's landfall, Louisiana
> executed a fundamentally unfair evacuation plan and did it badly. It
> relied on dividing the population into separate streams: People with
> their own cars were directed to shelters run by parishes, churches
> and the Red Cross. People with medical problems not requiring
> hospitalization were taken to special shelters. Sex offenders had a
> shelter to themselves.
>
> All those without a car or a ride were taken on state buses to four
> state-run warehouses. It was in these shelters, including two
> abandoned stores, a Wal-Mart and a Sam's Club, that thousands of
> working-poor New Orleanians got a sickening reminder of Katrina.
>
> Evacuees said they had had no idea where they were going; bus drivers
> would not tell them. When they arrived, there were not enough
> portable toilets, and no showers. For five days there was no way to
> bathe, except with bottled water in filthy outdoor toilets. Privacy
> in the vast open space - 1,000 people to a warehouse,
> shoulder-to-shoulder on cots - was nonexistent. The mood among
> evacuees was grim, surrounded as they were by police officers and the
> National Guard, with no visitors or reporters allowed.
>
> "We didn't want to evacuate into a prison," Lethia Brooks told the
> New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice, an organization that
> accompanied the evacuees, inspected the shelters and collected
> hundreds of stories into a report sharply critical of the state's
> response.
>
> Gustav ended up being no Katrina, and the week of suffering was not
> as severe as the deathly mayhem of three years ago. But residents had
> every right to expect far better treatment than they received. After
> a week of indignities in crowded, unsanitary shelters, many returned
> home with their fragile finances in turmoil. They had been forced to
> buy extra basics while out of their homes, and September rent was due.
>
> The secretary of Louisiana's Department of Social Services, which was
> responsible for the shelters, resigned after this scandal and one
> involving problems with food stamp distribution.
>
> Now, many poor residents are vowing "never again," as in, "Never
> again will we get on the bus to be warehoused. We'll ride out the
> next storm." In New Orleans, disaster is never far away, and
> government incompetence cannot be allowed to undermine a swift, sure
> evacuation. Gov. Bobby Jindal's administration should move quickly on
> a better plan that does not expose the poor to differential,
> substandard treatment.
> --
> http://plenty.org
>
> http://plentyblog.com
> NY Times Editorial
> "Never Again"
>
> Hurricane Gustav gave the state of Louisiana a test for which it had
> three years to prepare. There were thousands of poor, sick, disabled
> and elderly people who could not get out on their own. They needed to
> be rescued with dispatch, and sheltered in safety and dignity.
>
> One simple test. The state flunked.
>
> Three years to the week after Hurricane Katrina's landfall, Louisiana
> executed a fundamentally unfair evacuation plan and did it badly. It
> relied on dividing the population into separate streams: People with
> their own cars were directed to shelters run by parishes, churches
> and the Red Cross. People with medical problems not requiring
> hospitalization were taken to special shelters. Sex offenders had a
> shelter to themselves.
>
> All those without a car or a ride were taken on state buses to four
> state-run warehouses. It was in these shelters, including two
> abandoned stores, a Wal-Mart and a Sam's Club, that thousands of
> working-poor New Orleanians got a sickening reminder of Katrina.
>
> Evacuees said they had had no idea where they were going; bus drivers
> would not tell them. When they arrived, there were not enough
> portable toilets, and no showers. For five days there was no way to
> bathe, except with bottled water in filthy outdoor toilets. Privacy
> in the vast open space - 1,000 people to a warehouse,
> shoulder-to-shoulder on cots - was nonexistent. The mood among
> evacuees was grim, surrounded as they were by police officers and the
> National Guard, with no visitors or reporters allowed.
>
> "We didn't want to evacuate into a prison," Lethia Brooks told the
> New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice, an organization that
> accompanied the evacuees, inspected the shelters and collected
> hundreds of stories into a report sharply critical of the state's
> response.
>
> Gustav ended up being no Katrina, and the week of suffering was not
> as severe as the deathly mayhem of three years ago. But residents had
> every right to expect far better treatment than they received. After
> a week of indignities in crowded, unsanitary shelters, many returned
> home with their fragile finances in turmoil. They had been forced to
> buy extra basics while out of their homes, and September rent was due.
>
> The secretary of Louisiana's Department of Social Services, which was
> responsible for the shelters, resigned after this scandal and one
> involving problems with food stamp distribution.
>
> Now, many poor residents are vowing "never again," as in, "Never
> again will we get on the bus to be warehoused. We'll ride out the
> next storm." In New Orleans, disaster is never far away, and
> government incompetence cannot be allowed to undermine a swift, sure
> evacuation. Gov. Bobby Jindal's administration should move quickly on
> a better plan that does not expose the poor to differential,
> substandard treatment.
> --
> http://plenty.org
>
> http://plentyblog.com