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September 02, 2005
Updates and Rumors
I've been hearing things about people on the ground from associates and friends. None of it is particularly good, nor particularly different. People have lost 'everything', job, home, car. So I'm trying to scope out a little charity budget and send a piece here and there. One of these folks is Cassandra Henry, one of the reviewers from 3blackchicks.com. Good writers. I'll be sending along a little something.
I have heard that GMAC has not officially said to the victims "you don't owe us for your car". So people whose cars are under water still have to pay their car note.
I heard that there is a guy who runs an underground ISP and has generators, He's trying to get some webcams up and running in the city.
I think my aunt's house might not be too badly damaged, but the most recent satellite pictures confirm that there is no place in this town that was really spared. It's got to stink to high heaven out there now. Gators, dead bodies, god knows what all in that nasty water. Wednesday I kept having visions of people walking through the water barefoot and stepping on nails or wrenching their ankles in unseen potholes.
While I still have a very hard time with the necessity for martial law, the notion that people can shoot at rescue helicopters and get away with it is crazy. If it take 1500 troops to put down that kind of insanity, do it. I heard snippets of panicky dainty journalists on the radio Wednesday talking about how they got out of Dodge and I really didn't appreciate that. (Especially considering Michael Yon). I've also made it clear that grabbing staples is justified.
These refugees are so sorry looking it just breaks your heart. Quite frankly I think we Americans are a bit soft and I won't be surprised to see the numbers of dead approaching 2000. Clearly, there were a lot of people out there surviving before the deluge on the slim margins. What I was seeing was a visual manifestation of the poor health of many African Americans. One poor woman's grandfather couldn't survive without a steady supply of oxygen. One particularly rude cameraman got 8 seconds of footage of a little white dog without showing the faces of the two obese black women it was sitting between. There were people in the streets who looked as if they have been in death beds for a while.
The NYT or the WaPo, I forget which, is covering the other angle on this matter which is that there are a dozen towns who haven't gotten the attention they deserve. In light of Bigfoot's story, it has become clear that people have to start misbehaving to get authorities to do. This is exactly what I was talking about two days ago when I said 'for shame'. The ridiculous media concentration on 'looting' has turned a bad situation into a distrustful one, and now people are suffering because of it. Somewhere between laying and waiting to dehydrate, breaking windows and shooting guns is what's necessary to get rescued. Let me say it plain and clear, the next reporter who tells a story about how scared people are from gunshots and looters is going to get poleaxed in this blog.
Meanwhile out on my end, I've been tasked to find out how people from LA might get on board a volunteer train. Updates will be right here.
Posted by mbowen at September 2, 2005 08:23 AM
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