It has taken me this long even to be able to write about what has happened in New Orleans. A natural disaster is one thing. Preventable tragedy is quite another. Yet worse is callousness and political grandstanding in the face of a preventable tragedy. The U. S. Government headed by President George Bush, obsessed with its own visions of terrorism, Big Oil politics, and "building democracy" in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, folded its Federal Emergency Management Agency into its new "War On Terrorism" command-and-control-centre, the so-called "Department of Homeland Security," slashed the budgets of the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers/Mississippi River Commission and other bodies charged with management of coastal and riverine infrastructures essential to hurricane and flood management -- and staffed executive offices with imbeciles, apparently. It was a recipe for the worst domestic tragedy in the history of the U. S. A.
The whole thing is almost too obscene to discuss. Bush, Brown, Blanco and others should be arrested and tried for mass murder. Only New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin came out of this looking like a decent human being as opposed to a political monster.
Reading through entries in the New Orleans Times-Picayune's newsblog, I notice a sub-tragedy in the whole affair -- the tragedy of the pets. Most (though not all) of the official "rescuers" refused to allow the rescued to take their pets with them when evacuated. Now, belatedly, there's a half-hearted effort to backtrack and try to help the hapless, helpless animals whose abandonment was forced by rescue agencies. There are some caring people who have tried to help, and the NOLA newsblog holds several stories about such efforts. Here is one example, Thibodeaux Church Sheltering Pets; a perusal of the NOLA blog (one of the best sources of real news about the New Orleans situation versus press-conference-crap) will yield several more such stories.
I ran across one very moving photograph of a black family in a tiny New Orleans house with flood waters surrounding the porch, who refused to evacuate because they would not abandon their dogs -- visible in the photo were two nice-looking Siberian Huskies. It says something about the enormous disconnect these days between "government" and real people, when poor folks in dire straits, immersed in a major disaster, have the moral fibre NOT to abandon their pets -- while all the big-name politicos seem to see in the situation is just another "photo opportunity."
Posted by jjeffrey at September 5, 2005 01:23 PMThe man-made portion of this tragedy is at all levels of the government, starting at local & state, and then continuing on up to the federal level. You don't send people to shelters without a plan or provisions. Lack of communication at the local levels, then state levels and finally federal levels shows all the holes in all 3 systems. The feds will take the brunt of the criticism, but the local & state govts should be held accountable as well (several of the state emergency staff were indicted last year for mismanagement/embezzling of emergency funds). As with past tragedies, the best that can come out of this is improvement at all levels, including giving FEMA a bump back up the hierarchy of the federal government. The next best thing that can come out of this is for the people of the US to remind the government at all levels is the reason they are there, "for the people".
The shining news are the selfless thousands of volunteers in both human and animal rescue. At some point more of these stories will come out and I look forward to them as affirmation of the best of the human spirit (the worst is played out in the news everday). People helping people and animals.
Florida has been struggling with the issue of pet rescue when humans are rescued during storms, as most shelters do not take pets. They will most likely be at the forefront of this issue as many will not leave their homes without their beloved pets, whom they see as family members. They do have some shelters as pet friendly, but most are not. This issue will likely take years to resolve, but will result in a more organized response to rescuing "pet people" and "non-pet people" with appropriate shelters for both.