Now that the fun is over...

I have been writing about the fun times at Eucalyptus Bowl these past few days and I have enjoyed it immensely however life isn’t all about fun and games and even though I have been having a good time, it is about time that I give my 2 cents on the situation in New Orleans.

Putting aside the natural disaster itself, as these are an inevitable part of life around the Gulf of Mexico, the response from the US government has been appalling.  I have read a few posts in other blogs defending Bush and claiming that these “anti-Bush” people are jumping at media sensationalism and to be honest I think that is appalling.  The fact of the matter is that the flooding of New Orleans was a natural disaster that cost many many lives, but I want to know how many people died during the week after from lack of care and from violence.  How many people died in the heat and the crowds at the SuperDome and the Convention Centre?  This will be the true test of how “successful” rescue efforts were.

The fact is that the Governor mobilised National Guardsmen and issued “shoot to kill” orders against looters on Day 2.  On Day 5, many people at the two main gathering points in New Orleans were still in the same clothes and without food & water.  Why is it so easy to mobilise military muscle and not easy to drive a couple of tankers full of water into the city?  Why is it so easy to have helicopters flying around cherry picking people off roof tops yet you cannot organise trucks of any description to ferry people out?

In all seriousness, that SuperDome holds 65,000 people for sporting events and yet when 20,000 people are inside it, they cannot organise public transport to get people out in an orderly fashion?  20,000 people is not such a big crowd given that the New Orleans Saints gets 3 times that many every second week of the NFL season so why was it so hard to get them out?

In this modern day, the end result has been a tragic disaster.