From: Sam Norton (elizaphanian@kohath.wanadoo.co.uk)
Date: Mon Sep 05 2005 - 09:11:19 BST
Hi Platt,
> IMO all those things leading up to the disaster are the important things.
> A city (community) below sea level whose existence depends on keeping
> water out has a moral responsibility to prepare for a predictable
> calamity, just as the Dutch do in Holland. I would like to know from Wim
> Nusselder or anyone else familiar with the Netherlands what their plans
> are in case of breaches of their dikes and if those plans are widely known
> and understood by the populace..
I agree that those things are important, and it raises wider issues (like
how a 'community' is sustained) but I had wanted to concentrate on the
specific issue of what to do at the moment the evacuation order was given.
> Local officials who gave the order to evacuate knew, or should have known,
> that at least 35 percent of black and 15 percent of white households
> didn't have cars. So, in the absence of any prior planning to share rides
> with neighbors or to go to specified locations where buses and trains
> would be available, the evacuation order was fatally flawed from the
> beginning. Public transportation doesn't suddenly materialize at the right
> places at the right times overnight.
Right, that makes sense.
> I disagree that there was an "abandonment of community." Any
> "abandonment" came prior to the disaster due to lack of proper emergency
> planning by local officials.
... but that doesn't make sense. I would have thought that a 'fatally flawed
evacuation order' (which doesn't recognise the needs of the vulnerable)
becomes exactly an 'abandonment of community'. I think the other points you
make are additional to that, not a replacement.
> Once what many had predicted would happen
> actually happened, and in the the absence of a civic plan to cope with
> what happened., the poor in New Orleans had little choice but wait to be
> rescued which they were, are and will continue to be. That's a far cry
> from being "abandoned."
I think that's where we might disagree. Do elected officials have any duty
towards the vulnerable of a community? If so, then the 'absence of a civic
plan', and the delay in, eg, getting supplies to the stadium, seem culpable
acts. Whether that constitutes 'abandonment' might end up being a semantic
argument.
> Moreover, while the media has focused on New
> Orleans, there are thousands of casualties along the gulf coast who have
> and will continue to receive aid from not only their fellow citizens, but
> from nations around the world. They too have not been abandoned.
>
> Having lived in New Orleans for several years, I could say a lot more
> about the moral character of that city and how it's pride in being "the
> Big Easy" contributed to its downfall. But, that's beside the point you
> raised.
>
> What do you think?
I think Arlo's image is haunting. The rich in their SUV's leaving the poor
behind - they passed by on the other side. It would be interesting to
explore how far the prior breakdown in community (ie moral character)
contributed to the general breakdown in the last week, not in the sense that
'they got what they deserved' but in the sense that compassion for the
vulnerable was allowed to die.
Seems to me that a conservative analysis would precisely want to explore
that breakdown in the structures of community. Why is it that the stresses
caused by the hurricane caused the society in NO to collapse, whereas
similar events elsewhere (eg Cuba) did not cause the community to collapse?
That's what I'm going to be pondering.
Cheers
Sam
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