Topic: Events
My mother sent me a link to this video (39 MB download, unfortunately, no longer appears to be available, sorry), which simply but effectively presents a series of still photos from New Orleans. I haven't been looking at a lot of images from the city -- I've mostly been relying on text accounts, and these pictures hit me hard.
In the middle of the video, a short sequence of photos from the Superdome had me in tears. The series opens with a picture of an elderly woman in a housecoat sitting in the stadium, with the playing field behind her and other refugees visible around her. The next image is an overhead shot of a couple rows of people trying to sleep in the stadium seats. That was the one that broke me -- there are kids trying to sleep on those seats, and the adults taking care of them must have been absolutely beside themselves. That picture pulls back to show an entire section of the stadium, and it was then that I started to fully recognize how many people were there. To be packed in like that for days is just unimaginable. And judging from the condition of the field, these pictures were taken before the roof of the dome was ripped off in the storm. The final photograph is of a boy, I'd guess maybe 10 years old, collecting emergency rations in the stadium. His face is quiet and serious, and it looks like he's very conscious of a need to behave calmly. The man leaning down to hand him the rations, who appears to be a member of the National Guard, looks as if this might be one kid too many that he's seen that day. His eyes are in shadow, but his mouth is pressed into a tight line, and the feeling conveyed by the scene is one of people trying very hard to keep control of themselves under incredible pressure. I was sobbing by that point. I can't, or maybe I don't even want to imagine how everyone - the people who took refuge in the stadium and the people who were there trying to assist them - must have felt.
So I was relieved to see this headline on Yahoo News: Guardsmen Evacuate Refugees from Superdome. Then I was utterly horrified to read about the conditions that the people who took shelter in the Superdome had to endure: trash a foot deep, bathrooms that couldn't be used because they had no lights and the toilets were clogged and fetid. People were so eager to get out that they lined up on concourses with no shelter from the sun, and no relief from the heat and humidity, to wait to get on a bus to leave.
Meanwhile, 700 guests and employees of the nearby Hyatt hotel, who were stranded in less appalling conditions, were moved to the front of the evacuation line, presumably so that the vacated hotel could be used as a base of operations by police, firefighters and city officials. While I guess I can understand the desire to get critical services coordinated in one location as quickly as possible, people were collapsing from heat exhaustion trying to get out of the Superdome. I can't believe that no one thought to say, "Maybe we should evacuate the people who have been living without a roof over their heads before we empty out the hotel." And it really seems to me like there ought to have been some way to work around the people stranded in the Hyatt until everyone was out of the stadium. Seems like there must have been a critical breakdown in the decision-making process somewhere.
MaryAnn from Geek Philosophy wonders "if one of the biggest affects of Katrina won't be a new recognition of and willingness to do something about the appalling poverty that so many Americans live in" (see the comments section of this post). I would like nothing better than to be able to think so, but actions like pre-empting the evacuation of the Superdome in order to clear out the Hyatt seem to indicate that decision makers are still unwilling or unable to give priority to the needs of the have-nots. Talking Points Memo has a number of good posts (this one for example) that illustrate how a lack of consideration for the poor and powerless, combined with other major gaps in planning, preparation, and funding, contributed to the scale of the disaster.
If you want to contribute to the recovery efforts, This Is Not Over is polling its readers in the affected areas for advice about local organizations that need support. Click here for their recommendations.
Update: Just wanted to add a plug for Slate's coverage of the hurricane, and this post on Uncommon Sense, which addresses the government's seeming inability to recognize and acknowledge that major structural injustices were and are at work in the tragedy taking place in the hurricane-affected areas.