Yes, I do have a lot to say about Katrina
Originally posted 9/9/06

KatieJ:
Thank you, Neil. You made it more real to me than all of the television broadcasts and news stories on Katrina.

You are more than welcome. Trust me. And thanks to all the other compassionate people here. I appreciate all the kind thoughts sent my way, I really do. But there are so many others who were nothing like as fortunate as I was. I get sick thinking about it. It seems that unless someone was actually there, they honestly can't "get it." I don't understand that, but then I was there.

My apartment was on Fifth Street; I have a distant cousin who lived on Second. Nothing on Second is inhabitable. The only thing that save me and what little I had was the railroad embankment that ran on the south side of Fifth St (about where Fourth should have been). Nothing south of the railroad was inhabitable. Some structures were simply gone.

All of the little bayou community of Waveland was gone. Not a single structure standing. Not one. Nothing but foundations and a little trash. Boats were sitting on the highway. Not dinghys, but big shrimp boats and yachts. In fact, there is STILL a big shrimp boat that is grounded near I-10, over half a mile from the water. Perhaps someday, the owners will find a way to get it to water again.

For the first few days, we drove around the boats. For the first several months we continued to drive over downed powerlines. There were plenty of organizations giving out medical care and food in the sweltering heat that is the Gulf Coast in the summer. Frankly, I don't understand how those people without access to air conditioning and running water made it. But they did.

My girlfriend at the time, we had a restaurant we liked down at the marina. The Whitecaps. There's no marina anymore. There's no aquarium (though I understand it's being rebuit). All the big structures down near the water, like the big Methodist church and the library are shredded. You can look inside and see what little is left as entire walls are missing. In the library, you could see a table and two chairs left on the second floor by the work crew who cleaned it up. The beach is a wreck. Downed trees everywhere, out in the water as far as a hundred meters or more.

Driving through the neighborhoods is a mess. So many trees snapped off about half way up. Every house had to be gutted because of the water damage and the black mold. The roads are lined with debris. The trucks come through, load up hundreds of tons of crap, and within a couple of days, people have dragged out more crap that needs to be hauled away and buried.

One of our guys took pictures as he went out on one of the first helicopter assessment flights. Where my Bell rep lived was nothing but trash and foundations. My Sikorsky rep got away with only six trees hitting his house. He was one of the lucky ones. The QC Officer was very lucky. He now has an ocean view as everything between him and the Gulf is now gone. He got a FEMA trailer to put on his lot after only three months of hasselling.

Yeah, I know it was a natural disaster. Yeah, I know Bush himself can't control the weather. My problem is not with the hurricane. People who live on the Gulf Coast understand that and accept the risks (unless they are total redneck idiots, in which case they simply don't think about it). My problem is with the stunningly poor response by the Republican administration. My problem is with the Republicans and their cheerleaders who went into vitriolic victim-blaming as it became more and more clear just how badly Bush fucked up. My problem is with the demonstrated, blatant, and unrepentant inhumanity of the Republicans.

If this is their idea of governance, count me among the anarchists.

--
"Go fuck yourself!"
-- VP Dick "I gots other priorities, bitches" Cheney on the floor of the United States Senate
And isn't it a bad thing to be deceived about the truth, and a good thing to know what the truth is? For I assume that by knowing the truth you mean knowing things as they really are.
-- Plato