Republicans and Katrina

[Neecy]

I'm reading The Great Deluge by Douglas Brinkley about Katrina and there's a thread running through it that's literally making me want to puke.

Brett Favre's cousin was (I have no idea if he still is) the mayor of Bay St. Louis in Mississippi and he's interviewed throughout the first part of the book. He takes great pains to excuse Bush and FEMA for not showing up in his town for days and days (some of his constituents were not nearly so generous - they were pissed) and he repeats a mantra that he didn't 'whine' or 'bitch' or 'demand the government rescue people' or 'wait for the government to show up'. He goes on in this vein at length and while the purpose is to shore up Bush's miserable performance not only in NOLA but throughout the gulf coast region it also smacks of code racism - like these manly white Mississipians rolled up their sleeves while African-Americans abandoned at the Convention Center and the Superdome were 'waiting for the government' to rescue them.

This is so disingenous because there's no comparison between a small gulf town where he could use the local high school as an emergency shelter for survivors and ask Wal-Mart to pony up supplies and a large flooded urban area with many thousands of people with no access to food or water. And he knows this, but repeats his bigoted GOP talking points throughout the book. And he seemed glad to abandon his consituents to their own devices during the biggest crisis they'll know in their lives - civilians were rescuing people with jetskiis because NOBODY SHOWED UP.

Here are a couple of his choice quotes - they appear throughout the first part of the book:

"Needless to say, in my town there was no police looting." (Needless to say? Why?)

"FEMA was essentially nowhere to be found. But we didn't whine about that or complain. We acted." (like the people on the bridge to Gretna acted, and were forced back at gunpoint?)

This guy is a prime example of how Republicans place their political beliefs above the interests of the people they're supposed to be serving - a typical GOP hack, a snide racist, a friggin' liar.

Thanks for letting me vent.

[RethugAssKicker]

1. Unfortunately, its not only Rethugs who feel this way !

[Mz Pip]

2. Various forms of these

accusations are circulating the Internets. Some compare Katrina to a blizzard in South Dakota, others to the recent snow storms in Denver. Here's Snopes take on it.

http://www.snopes.com/katrina/soapbox/dakota.asp

Mz Pip
:dem:

[BOSSHOG]

3. He's still the Mayor

and things aren't going that swimmingly in Bay St Louis. I think maybe Doug Brinkley should do a follow up.

[Neecy]

4. for sure...

He says in the preface to his book that he'd like to do that - and I hope he interviews Favre again to see how well his town has done under the Bush regime.

[jobycom]

5. There was nothing in Bay St. Louis to loot

Most of the town went underwater, and it's not like it was wealthy enough to loot to start with. An interesting story--there is a casino behind Bay St. Louis. Two weeks after Katrina the casino management went back to the casino to see what they could salvage. They found roughly two million dollars in bags on the casino floor, where employees had to set it before evacuating. No one had come in, no one had looted it. But not because no one was looting--just because there was not enough of Bay St. Louis left for anyone to bother with.

Second, the biggest difference between the Mississippi Gulf Coast and New Orleans was access. Only the first half mile to mile of the coast was flooded by the storm surge. Some places--Biloxi and Bay St. Louis, especially--were hit between a coastal surge and backwater from bays and bayous, so the damage went further back. Even so, there were shelters, houses, and highway access to regions that had not been flooded just a couple of miles up the road. Most people could still live in their houses, and once the water receded and the roads were cleared, they could reach central points where water, food, and ice were being distributed. Not to make light of it, conditions were still horrendous, gasoline was in short supply, and the entire coast looked like a scene from a post-apocolypse film. But there were resources in Mississippi that New Orleans just didn't have. I wasn't in Mississippi for Katrina, but I got there the Friday after the hurricane. My parents already had water connected, and the entire state, with the exception of a few regions where there weren't enough structures to even warrant it, electricity was fully restored within two weeks of Katrina. People on the coast could easily find someone with AC, water, and shelter. In short, people could help themselves.

New Orleans went completely underwater. Not only was the electricity knocked out, but the transformers and wires were all underground, thus flooded. The water supply was ruined. The authorities blocked roads into New Orleans, so even people who wanted to help weren't allowed in. There was no gasoline (pumps and tanks had all been flooded), so people couldn't drive out. Many of the roads themselves were underwater. The bridge over Lake Pontchartrain to Slidell was destroyed, as was Slidell. The Causeway across the lake was still drivable, but for a while you couldn't have gotten to it in a vehicle, and anyway, it led to another region that had been heavily damaged. The only access was over the river, or the elevated highway to Baton Rouge--and again, it was impossible for most people to get to the roadways to drive out.

Supplies could be brought in, buses could have gotten people out. There were even offers of free buses to the city to evacuate people. FEMA shot those offers down, swearing they already had buses on the way. Their buses took four days to get there--I passed many of them on my way down there on the Friday after the hurricane. FEMA didn't get ice or water there, they didn't get gasoline to power generators, they didn't get the National Guard down there until the Saturday after the hurricane (the same time the National Guard rolled into Mississippi--I have pictures of the convoys coming down Highway 49).

There is no comparison between what happened in New Orleans and what happened in Mississippi. Most people who tried to help themselves in New Orleans were thwarted in every way.