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OUTRAGED OWL # 11
Snowwowl-September 2005

NATIONAL DISGRACE: Notes on New Orleans - 2005

By now I am quite sure that anyone who reads this, will be quite knowledgeable in the events and circumstances regarding Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

At the time of this writing, it is the evening of the 5th day. What I have seen to this point deserves all the negative descriptions you can think of. In short, it has been a National Disgrace.

This, having been said, I want to try and think a little bit beyond the immediate sphere of this disaster and its consequences.

One of the first thoughts I had was: My heavens, if one city can affect the entire nation the way that it has – it would take but a handful of the larger cities in America being “hit” in a major way, by any of the very real avenues of destruction, and basically America would be removed from the World Scene for quite some time.

Following this, I begin to feel somewhat stupefied when the realization hit that with all its has had going for it, a nation such as ours could even remotely put itself in the position of being rendered nationally ineffectual by such a scenario.

You mean to tell me that with all the brains this country has produced and has, no one ever heard of what happens when you put all your eggs into one basket? I would much rather our so-called elected officials would spend the time they waste in approving (spelled BLOCKING) individuals for certain offices simply because the individual was chosen by a President of the opposing party, to coming up with plans and projects that are actually beneficial to the country’s people.

I want to know why a country that can move an army half-way around the world and then win a war in approximately the same time this disaster has been going on – can’t show the same rapidity within their own country?

I would hope that all these politicians that love to think they know what their voters want, recognize reality and see that by closing down military bases, just how badly they are damaging the safety and security of our nation. And this does not even cover what the closures do to the economies of the very ones that put them into office!

I am also very ashamed of some of my fellow countrymen. In the midst of all this agony, misery, and loss – there are those who, for some totally unfathomable reason, are shooting at what rescue workers, etc., there are and trying their darndest to help. I would call these people animals except that it would be far to insulting to real animals.

Law Enforcement? Where? Now I have heard and read so many horror stories of the New Orleans’ police system, et al, BEFORE this disaster that there must be a grain of truth in there somewhere. Still, what I heard of their actions thus far, it is more than just a grain.

For any police officer, to tell a woman asking for directions/instructions – “Go to hell. It’s every man for himself.” – is an absolute disgrace to every dedicated law enforcement individual throughout the nation, not just Louisiana.

SEPT. 4TH

It would seem that things are getting better, but then again in the present context they could harder get any worse. At least the National Government is getting its act somewhat together.

What has taken them so long, we will not know for awhile. It just seems that the US has this extremely bad habit of waiting until it gets it butt kicked before they do anything. It has happened over and over again.

The prime example is how the US knew well before hand that Japan was going to do something, and well before hand that it was Pearl Harbor that they had in mind. Yet, we waited.

Well, it applies here as well. It is extremely well documented that the officials of New Orleans, as well as the majority of its citizens I believe, knew that the levees would not withstand a Level 4 or above hurricane.

For years experts shouted this very fact to them as the wizards of weather kept telling them a 4 Class was due. But the officials kept putting it off because of their own personal agendas they wanted to cover first; and the citizens let them get away with it because upgrading the levee would more than likely have caused them an increase in taxes.

Now, all you hear are screams of “Who’s to blame for this!”

The answer? We all are: The officials and citizens of New Orleans as put forth above…and the rest of American for not getting them to do something about it, somehow – someway. I mean it wasn’t like we had to convince them to move their city to Mars. The solution was there all the time, and we/they chose to ignore it cause “it will never happen to me/us syndrome”.

Well, it did and it had best serve as a warning to all the cities and towns of America because each and every area has its metrological or geographical disaster waiting in the dark hallways of the future. And remember, the future is as close as the next second.

Are we so greedy that we will continue to need hundreds, thousands killed before we apply “protective” measures, instead of spending the money now, and those hundreds or thousands need not die?

It does not make sense. I don’t have a clue as to what the cost of upgrading the levees would have been, but most assuredly it would pale in significance at what the final cost is going to be after the recovery and rebuilding of New Orleans, et all, and then the levees.
 

HEYA!

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