Fallujah, LA (formerly known as New Orleans) – We're Going to Cover That In Phase 2

It just keeps getting worse and worse. If I were to tell you about a city that: has no power, has no clean water, has no food, has no working infrastructure, consists mainly of rubble, has dead bodies laying about in the streets, has rampant lawlessness, is controlled by armed bands of people roving the streets and has people shooting at helicopters you might name a city in Iraq. You would never have named a U.S. city, until today that is: what I just described is happening RIGHT NOW in New Orleans. The reason why the scariest horror stories to me are books like The Stand and movies like 28 Days Later is because our society is so loosely held together – in the end it only takes so very little to rip it all to shreds. The animal side of humanity can take over so quickly and things can go from bad to worse to atrocious in no time. We are seeing this first hand by watching Nawlins become a third world country.

This is from an AP report dated today, filed at 2:02 PM:

An old man in a chaise lounge lay dead in a grassy median as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered up by a blanket, and another body lay beside her wrapped in a sheet.
“I don’t treat my dog like that,” 47-year-old Daniel Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair. “I buried my dog.” He added: “You can do everything for other countries but you can’t do nothing for your own people. You can go overseas with the military but you can’t get them down here.”

To echo those sentiments, the NY Times published an absolutely scathing editorial lambasting our dear President’s performance over the past few days. To give you an idea of how angry the Times (and I am) is, here are the first 2 sentences:

George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday, especially given the level of national distress and the need for words of consolation and wisdom. In what seems to be a ritual in this administration, the president appeared a day later than he was needed.

Again, we’re told with a smirk that everything will be alright by someone who has less than zero credibility. Where is the LA National Guard, which could have been deployed to help prevent what has happened from happening? Oh yeah, they are fighting a losing war in Iraq. The authorities should have very quickly realized that the poorest and most desperate (not just before this storm hit mind you) part of the city’s population was not leaving. Its tough to think that your citizens will become animals but you always have to plan for the worst and hope for the best. Seems as if that wasn’t done that well down south from where I’m sitting.

Below is an except from the AP story about the disaster that quoted and have a link to above. NOTE: this is disturbing and sad to read.
A humid, dusky haze hung over the football field, pierced by three angular shafts of light, as if from an old biblical movie, streaming through holes that the storm tore in the rubbery white fabric covering the dome.
Desperation was in the air. Danielle Shelby tugged at a reporter’s arm. “I have a handicapped daughter,” she said. “She’s over there with her wheelchair. She’s hot. We don’t have any water. I’m afraid she’s going to have a seizure.”
Others crowded around. “I’ve been in the food line twice, and every time I get to the front they tell me they don’t have any left,” said Juanita McFerrin, 80.
“My husband has cancer,” another woman said. “He’s not getting his regular treatment.”
Frank L. Jones, 54, said he had gone four days without his asthma medicine. Lionel Valentine, 53, who breathes with the help of an oxygen machine, wanted to know if his family would be split up again as they were moved from the dome.
It got worse. Ms. Rousell recalled hearing a loud bang Tuesday afternoon as the body of a man slapped the concrete at the edge of the football field in a fatal suicidal plunge, after he apparently learned that his home had been destroyed. Others told of fights that broke out in food lines, and of a husband and wife who slugged each other in a wild argument.
Several residents said they had heard of children being raped, though it was not clear whether anyone reported such incidents to the authorities, and no officials could be found who could confirm the accounts.
Darcel Monroe, 21, a bakery cashier, stammered hysterically as she recounted seeing two young girls being raped in one of the women’s bathrooms. “A lot of people saw it but they were afraid to do anything,” she said. “He ran out past all of us.”
Many said they felt they had been dumped and abandoned in the stadium. There were no television sets to allow them to follow the rescue efforts, or learn when they might get out.

One thought on “Fallujah, LA (formerly known as New Orleans)”

jefe says:

September 1, 2005 at 5:52 pm

Below is an except from the AP story about the disaster that quoted and have a link to above. NOTE: this is disturbing and sad to read.
A humid, dusky haze hung over the football field, pierced by three angular shafts of light, as if from an old biblical movie, streaming through holes that the storm tore in the rubbery white fabric covering the dome.
Desperation was in the air. Danielle Shelby tugged at a reporter’s arm. “I have a handicapped daughter,” she said. “She’s over there with her wheelchair. She’s hot. We don’t have any water. I’m afraid she’s going to have a seizure.”
Others crowded around. “I’ve been in the food line twice, and every time I get to the front they tell me they don’t have any left,” said Juanita McFerrin, 80.
“My husband has cancer,” another woman said. “He’s not getting his regular treatment.”
Frank L. Jones, 54, said he had gone four days without his asthma medicine. Lionel Valentine, 53, who breathes with the help of an oxygen machine, wanted to know if his family would be split up again as they were moved from the dome.
It got worse. Ms. Rousell recalled hearing a loud bang Tuesday afternoon as the body of a man slapped the concrete at the edge of the football field in a fatal suicidal plunge, after he apparently learned that his home had been destroyed. Others told of fights that broke out in food lines, and of a husband and wife who slugged each other in a wild argument.
Several residents said they had heard of children being raped, though it was not clear whether anyone reported such incidents to the authorities, and no officials could be found who could confirm the accounts.
Darcel Monroe, 21, a bakery cashier, stammered hysterically as she recounted seeing two young girls being raped in one of the women’s bathrooms. “A lot of people saw it but they were afraid to do anything,” she said. “He ran out past all of us.”
Many said they felt they had been dumped and abandoned in the stadium. There were no television sets to allow them to follow the rescue efforts, or learn when they might get out.

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