So, Gustav is on his way toward us. It'll probably be a Category 3 when it makes landfall, somewhere on the Gulf Coast. That "somewhere" seems to be more and more likely Louisiana and specifically, New Orleans.
Friday will be the three year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. And here I am, staring a a 5-day forecast of Gustav that looks eerily similar to the one I was looking at almost three years ago. The Army Corps of Engineers claims were safer this time. I doubt that, what with the Army Corps stuffing holes with newspaper this past spring. Governor Jindal, with all his faults, at least sounds like he has a plan. Friday we start evacuating the coastal parishes like Plaquemines. Saturday or Sunday we enact contraflow and begin getting the areas around New Orleans out of here. There are bus companies that have state contracts to bus people to Baton Rouge.
Jefferson Parish says that once the mandatory evacuation is given, people with no means of evacuating can go to any bus stop and be bussed to Baton Rouge. Elderly and those that are home-bound can call and be shuttled from their homes. Sewage and Water Board employees are cross-trained in pump house operations should the pump house operators not be able to do their jobs for whatever reason. Not only that, giant, strong safe houses have been built for the pump workers to stay in during the storm. They'll be able to operate the pumps remotely from those safe houses even during the storm.
Nagin's hanging out at the Democratic National Convention. I'm sure if this thing comes toward us, he'll pop up on TV and talk a big game, as if he's your old college buddy at the bar talking about how "One day, man, we're gonna finish school and we're gonna just drive to the beach and just live, man. We don't need jobs! We just need some sun, some brews, and some babes, man." And then he'll hop on a plane and go hide in Dallas. Then in about four days we'll hear him whining about Bush on Garland Robinette's show on WWL again and how "we need the support, man. And these people in Washington just, pardon my French, don't give a DAMN what happens down here.”
He's a little right.
Broussard's a wacko. Nagin's a wacko. Blanco's a wacko (still). Bush is a wacko. Yet, when there are local and national elections, I still know people that never vote . Seriously! How can you look at any of those leaders and say "Yeah. We pretty much did our best. Glad we made these collective choices."?
I'll probably never win the fight to get people my age to vote.
Anyway, I don't think we're safe physically. I think the city is effed again. But I think the evacuation will go better this time. And even if this is a false alarm, we should treat it like a fire drill. Remember those in school? At least now we'll know if the new plans work or not.
This New York Times article makes New Orleans sound like we're living in the middle of the Iraq War. It fails to mention about the reason we have any military presence still in the city is because we have no cops! The crime to cop ratio in New Orleans is very high. Before Katrina, we had about 1800 officers. As of last July, we had 1400. Finding numbers of officers immediately after the storm is tough, but I estimate we were around 1200. Our police force isn't what it was and we need that help. It's the State's job to help the local government. The State can deploy the National Guard. Lots of non-New Orleanians think they shouldn't be paying for this with their tax money. The problem is, since local government is at the bottom, State helps it. Federal helps the State. These larger governments are funded by other taxpayers' money. The reason other taxpayers' money is funding this is the by-product of a 232-year-old system.
Honestly, I don't feel any less safe in New Orleans than I did August 28, 2005. It's not like the media is making it out to be. Yeah, the crime rate sucks, but so does a lot of cities'.
“It's taking 3 years! You guys are failures. We shouldn't help anymore." We're doing a lot down here. It might sound like we're just throwing our hands up in the air and saying "Fuck it, you guys fix this" but that's not it at all. The media likes to sensationalize things to get a story out of a non-story. If everything you know about the situation down here is from the media, you can't possibly know the half of it. I'm not telling you to "spend a week down here and then you'll know" like a lot of people say. Hell, I honestly don't care if you blow off everything I'm saying. The short and skinny of it is, things aren't as bad as people are making it out to be, but we still need some outside help, at least for a while until we get back on our feet.
And three years for an entire city to completely rebuild its infrastructure is not absurd. Not to sound like a dick, but there's still an big empty space in NY. If people can't ban together to form a plan to rebuild a small section of a huge city after almost 7 years, I don't see how 3 years to rebuild almost an entire city and its outlying areas is unreasonable. Hell, on 3 days after Katrina hit and the water was everywhere, analysts said it would take a minimum of 10 years to be back 100%. I'd say at about 45-50% in 3 years, we're making good time.
Anyway, it's almost 3 years. It's time to remember the people we lost, but also think of how we'll keep moving forward.
And let's hope Gustav stays away.
Friday will be the three year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. And here I am, staring a a 5-day forecast of Gustav that looks eerily similar to the one I was looking at almost three years ago. The Army Corps of Engineers claims were safer this time. I doubt that, what with the Army Corps stuffing holes with newspaper this past spring. Governor Jindal, with all his faults, at least sounds like he has a plan. Friday we start evacuating the coastal parishes like Plaquemines. Saturday or Sunday we enact contraflow and begin getting the areas around New Orleans out of here. There are bus companies that have state contracts to bus people to Baton Rouge.
Jefferson Parish says that once the mandatory evacuation is given, people with no means of evacuating can go to any bus stop and be bussed to Baton Rouge. Elderly and those that are home-bound can call and be shuttled from their homes. Sewage and Water Board employees are cross-trained in pump house operations should the pump house operators not be able to do their jobs for whatever reason. Not only that, giant, strong safe houses have been built for the pump workers to stay in during the storm. They'll be able to operate the pumps remotely from those safe houses even during the storm.
Nagin's hanging out at the Democratic National Convention. I'm sure if this thing comes toward us, he'll pop up on TV and talk a big game, as if he's your old college buddy at the bar talking about how "One day, man, we're gonna finish school and we're gonna just drive to the beach and just live, man. We don't need jobs! We just need some sun, some brews, and some babes, man." And then he'll hop on a plane and go hide in Dallas. Then in about four days we'll hear him whining about Bush on Garland Robinette's show on WWL again and how "we need the support, man. And these people in Washington just, pardon my French, don't give a DAMN what happens down here.”
He's a little right.
Broussard's a wacko. Nagin's a wacko. Blanco's a wacko (still). Bush is a wacko. Yet, when there are local and national elections, I still know people that never vote . Seriously! How can you look at any of those leaders and say "Yeah. We pretty much did our best. Glad we made these collective choices."?
I'll probably never win the fight to get people my age to vote.
Anyway, I don't think we're safe physically. I think the city is effed again. But I think the evacuation will go better this time. And even if this is a false alarm, we should treat it like a fire drill. Remember those in school? At least now we'll know if the new plans work or not.
This New York Times article makes New Orleans sound like we're living in the middle of the Iraq War. It fails to mention about the reason we have any military presence still in the city is because we have no cops! The crime to cop ratio in New Orleans is very high. Before Katrina, we had about 1800 officers. As of last July, we had 1400. Finding numbers of officers immediately after the storm is tough, but I estimate we were around 1200. Our police force isn't what it was and we need that help. It's the State's job to help the local government. The State can deploy the National Guard. Lots of non-New Orleanians think they shouldn't be paying for this with their tax money. The problem is, since local government is at the bottom, State helps it. Federal helps the State. These larger governments are funded by other taxpayers' money. The reason other taxpayers' money is funding this is the by-product of a 232-year-old system.
Honestly, I don't feel any less safe in New Orleans than I did August 28, 2005. It's not like the media is making it out to be. Yeah, the crime rate sucks, but so does a lot of cities'.
“It's taking 3 years! You guys are failures. We shouldn't help anymore." We're doing a lot down here. It might sound like we're just throwing our hands up in the air and saying "Fuck it, you guys fix this" but that's not it at all. The media likes to sensationalize things to get a story out of a non-story. If everything you know about the situation down here is from the media, you can't possibly know the half of it. I'm not telling you to "spend a week down here and then you'll know" like a lot of people say. Hell, I honestly don't care if you blow off everything I'm saying. The short and skinny of it is, things aren't as bad as people are making it out to be, but we still need some outside help, at least for a while until we get back on our feet.
And three years for an entire city to completely rebuild its infrastructure is not absurd. Not to sound like a dick, but there's still an big empty space in NY. If people can't ban together to form a plan to rebuild a small section of a huge city after almost 7 years, I don't see how 3 years to rebuild almost an entire city and its outlying areas is unreasonable. Hell, on 3 days after Katrina hit and the water was everywhere, analysts said it would take a minimum of 10 years to be back 100%. I'd say at about 45-50% in 3 years, we're making good time.
Anyway, it's almost 3 years. It's time to remember the people we lost, but also think of how we'll keep moving forward.
And let's hope Gustav stays away.
