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Tingkai
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To find the Northwest Passage
Aug 2001
time: 13:33
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Tales of woe shame a nation
Rosie DiManno
Toronto Star
NEW ORLEANS—Nature wrought destruction but human beings have brought disgrace.
It is disgraceful that countless people are still stranded five days after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf coastline, flattening communities and knocking a major metropolis on its ear.
It is disgraceful that hundreds of state troopers and National Guard soldiers have been deployed to protect property rather than help people.
It is disgraceful that thousands of hurricane refugees — including the elderly, the infirm, the sick, mothers with babes in arms, children separated from parents — have been essentially abandoned in the Superdome and the convention centre, left to fend for themselves without food or water.
It is disgraceful that not a single relief agency has any presence on the ground as far as those of us who are here can see. No Red Cross, no federal emergency administrators, no medical teams, no shelter officials, no angels of mercy.
That is why, beneath the damp and dank, New Orleans is seething.
That — and not rampant greed — is why there has been so much looting in recent days, to the extent that police and troops have been taken away from critical rescue operations and assigned to watch the inmates, or outcasts, who are being treated like vagrants.
And that's all they do: Watch. Patrolling up and down the main arteries, in their armoured personnel carriers — as if this were Baghdad — automatic weapons hoisted on their shoulders, never stopping to assist fragile citizens in wheelchairs and walkers or mothers with ailing, wailing infants.
I've seen better disaster response efforts for earthquake victims in India and the ethnically cleansed exiles of Kosovo. Even the prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay are surely being cared for better than this.
Could it be because the overwhelming majority of these dispossessed are poor and black that their very lives are apparently of less worth than business properties in the French Quarter, deluxe hotels on Canal St., chi-chi mansions in the Garden District, and tourist casinos on the riverfront?
Rest of story at:
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Co...72154&t=TS_Home
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Tingkai
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To find the Northwest Passage
Aug 2001
time: 13:33
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quote:
Originally posted by Dis
This thread should post real news stories and not opinion pieces from newspapers in nations that have no idea what's really going on. |
The reporter is in New Orleans, not Toronto. You might not like what she is telling you, but she is telling you what is happening.
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Richelieu
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Gatineau
Dec 2001
time: 00:33
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quote:
Originally posted by Dis
This thread should post real news stories and not opinion pieces from newspapers in nations that have no idea what's really going on. |
To tell you the truth, the US looks like it doesn't know what's going on. The head of FEMA didn't know there were refugees in the Convention center as late as yesterday afternoon.
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lord of the mark
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FUKCOV - Former United Kingdom Colony of Virginia
Dec 2000
time: 00:33
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Atlanta Constitution:
Local efforts to help Gulf Coast hurricane victims put their lives back together appeared to gain momentum at shelters that continued to receive streams of evacuees.
Red Cross shelters in Adamsville and Newton County together were serving hundreds throughout the day Thursday. A third shelter opened in Cobb County to receive refugees being airlifted from hard-hit areas in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
Cobb shelter manager Jeanie Morris said the arrivals were unlike any she had encountered in 30 years as a Red Cross volunteer.
"This gives me goose bumps on my arms," she said.
The new arrivals in Adamsville and Newton found everything from employment assistance and medical attention to information on enrolling children in local schools — essentials needed to start new lives.
"I'm not going back," said Whitney Marcell, 24, a bus driver who fled New Orleans with his extended family of 27 and arrived at the Newton shelter Monday. "We're starting over here, with the grace of God." Marcell said he would try to contact MARTA today about a job.
The Adamsville Recreational Center on Martin Luther King Drive greeted visitors with a hand-drawn sign directing them to various tables staffed by the Georgia Department of Labor, Atlanta city schools, the state Department of Family and Children Services, and the Atlanta Workforce Development Agency.
A classroom down the hall from the gym had become a medical aid station, staffed by two doctors and a pharmacist from Grady Memorial Hospital. Visitors were given cards so they could receive medical services from the public hospital. Virtually all the requests were for medications for chronic conditions like hypertension, diabetes and arthritis.
One floor up, in the "cyberlab," there were computers for checking e-mail, composing résumés or searching for information on getting new driver's licenses and bank cards.
Volunteers and service providers said the refugees had mostly been calm, though some were beginning to complain. At one point Thursday, a group loudly demanded vouchers for gas as shelter officials pleaded for patience and understanding.
While the Red Cross could not help with gas — only shelter, food and clothing — an evacuee went into his pocket and gave the complainers money.
"God has blessed me with funds," said Mike Dummett, who owned a catering business in New Orleans. "We have been through a lot as Louisianians, and we're going to bounce back. But we need help."
Dummett then added: "I've got more love in three days [here] than in 20 years."
Dummett wasn't the only one spreading kindness. Some evacuees said they were awoken sometime between Wednesday night and Thursday morning by a man who handed out $100 bills. Several also were given envelopes containing cash.
In Newton County, Anthony Simms of New Orleans lined up an interview for a job as a ceramic tile layer after seeing two employment ads posted inside a Red Cross shelter at a Future Farmers of America camp.
Dave Bradberry, a businessman who posted the openings, said if today's interview went well, Simms, whose livelihood was wiped out by Hurricane Katrina, could start work Monday making as much as $150 a day, depending on his level of expertise.
"When I came to Georgia 18 years ago, all I had was the clothes on my back and a truck they were trying to repossess, and I started my life over," Bradberry said. "I thought I would do what I could to help somebody else start theirs over."
The Newton County Health Department distributed diapers and formula for infants. Outside, groups were milling around in the parking lot as they waited to be assigned cabins. Officials from the Newton County school system met with parents and planned to return today to either enroll kids in school or send teachers to the camp for daily classes, said Judy Dunn of the Red Cross.
The first 45 of an expected 240 evacuees arrived just before sunset Thursday at the west Cobb County shelter. Carrying shoe boxes and plastic bags containing everything they saved after Hurricane Katrina, the refugees were greeted at the shelter on Dallas Highway by volunteers armed with blankets, toiletries, food and smiles.
East New Orleans resident Ali Hubbard was flown from New Orleans to Dobbins Air Reserve Base by Navy helicopter with his wife, 5-year-old daughter and 25 others. First order of business, Hubbard said, was to "get some food and a good night's sleep" — the first since Hubbard's home was destroyed. Next, he said, a job.
"I'm looking for something," the former grocery meat clerk said. "I'll take a job as quick as I can find one."
Staff writer Don Plummer contributed to this article.
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