Heard something outrageous this morning about the evacuation of the superdome

[Cloudbringer]

Nope, Larry, I wouldn't take that bet! I'd guess that Hollywood is already bandying the idea around as things unfold.

I heard last night that they are sending 1400 national guard each day for 3 or 4 days ...I have NO idea how that compares to what is needed or already available for help there but hopefully it will help.

It truly is a mind boggling disaster and so very many people are suffering!

[Timber Loftis]

Originally posted by Ilander: Thank you, Chewbacca...I tried to say that and they thought I was supporting looters/rapists/murderers.

Personally I was just taking a piss at your generalized statements and maxims.

[Timber Loftis]

Originally posted by Larry_OHF: Who wants to bet a dozen books and a couple movies will be made from all this?

Too late. A tv movie where NO gets whacked with a Cat 5 was in the works, and now may get nixed for a couple of years.

[John D Harris]

Originally posted by Thoran: I don't understand why there aren't 50000 troops on the ground in New Orleans... we can mobilize troops and send em halfway around the world with heavy armor and for some reason we can only deliver 1500 a day to one of our own states. WTF!!

Phsyics, man phsyics It took nearly 6 MONTHS to get enough troops into the area for the first gulf war, several months to get troops for the second and they already had nearly half there. The troops have to be called up, guess what the governors of the states can also do that. Why haven't they done that? And don't try to give this:

Originally posted by Gangrell: Not sure, probably because most soldiers are already being used in Iraq to fight for oil so they're probably not about to pull them out. Edit - Worded differently.

Thislogic is ASSININE(as in having the qualities of an ASS) There about 130,000 troops in Iraq there are over 1,500,000 troops that can be called up or on active duty? 1,500,000 minus 130,000 that leaves 90% still availible to be deployed. Now that I got the BS crying Politic crap out of the way. The troops must be called up that takes time, they have to come from their homes and meet at their Guard armories. Now you have to wait until you get everybody there or at least enough of them. Now they have to load up and move to another location, gather supplies, that means pick stuff up(by hand most of the time) and pack them into trucks. Have any of you ever moved and packed a truck? did it happen in 2 minutes or did it take all damn day? And that is to load only the stuff for one family. These guys have to load enough stuff for them and everybody else down there. It sure as "Hale" isn't going to happen in a hour or two. Now remember boys and girls StarTrek is fantasy, ther are no transporters or stargates or any of that kinda stuff. This is the real world things take time, and I don't mean 48 mintues plus commercials. Now after they got all the stuff they are going to need loaded up, they have to DRIVE there. I'm not gettting on to you Thoran, but I've noticed allmost all the posters are not from Hurricane prone areas. If you haven't been through one you don't have a clue. And if you've been through one, you sure as "Hale" Know this was the Mother of all hurricanes. 90,000 square Miles of destruction did you people read what I wrote? 90,000 SQUARE miles. to give you a point of referance Hiroshima maybe 10 square miles of destruction, and that is being very very very generous. Ziroc has been through Charlie this thing makes Charlie look like a spring thunder strom. This thing dwarfs Opel, even make Camille look like the second string. If you have been through and F5 tornado just imagine 100,000 times as much area damaged. We are in west central Alabama we only got strong TS winds with some gusts to hurricane force. UNTIL THIS MORNING Ala 69 a MAIN north-south hwy through the state still had sections blocked and you could not travel on. You had to use other routes, well other routes take more time, if they didn't they would be the main routes. Now you've got to add the amount of time it takes to get everybody together, then add the time it takes to get them to where all the stuff is at, then add the time it takes to load the stuff up. then add the time it takes to drive to where you are going. Now once you get there you don't just rush in and SAY I'll turn down the first right, you turn down the first left, and so forth and so forth. If you did something that stupid you'd be in even a bigger world of hurt. you'd have you stuff all over the place and not where everybody was or how get back up with each other ot distribute the stuff. They have to find out what routes inside the city they can drive, Remember not all the roads are passable. That just gives you people a hint of some of the problems. Any of IW that have ever had to do a deployment like this is laughing at me because they KNOW I've left out many more time consumming things that has to happen on a deployment.

NOW if you look at the damage Mississippi took a HELL of a lot more damage then New Orleans. New Orleans is a realtively SMALL area with supposidly a government infrastructure, why they even had a police force to keep order in the city. As of monday evening and tuesday morning the levy had not broken, the where a few small breaches but not the major flooding. DOES anybody REMEMBER THE morning after how the NEWS was preaching New Orleans had been spared again? So you've got what troops you got headed to the worst hit area *Ding *Ding *Ding we have a winner IT is MISSISSIPPI. The NG are working their way their. Then the levy breaks and people start their crap, the COPS of the city are looking for people to rescue trying to save lives, as are the Guard that are in New Orleans. A bunch of low life sacks of horse manure start looting, and acting like they are living in some post apocalyptic movie, or worse like they are in Africa in one of those war torn countries. Now add to that there were a lot of SHEEP there just waiting to be told what to do, instead of getting off their rear ends and going they waited for somebody to come along and carry them away.

[ 09-02-2005, 05:39 PM: Message edited by: John D Harris ]

[Thoran]

I agree on the politics point but I think you're being too generous on the deployment side. Someone fubar'd and did it big.

In the first 10 days of Desert Shield there was the better part of a division on the ground in Saudi (Congressional Budget Office based on data from the U.S. Transportation Command and Ronald Rost, John Addams, and John Nelson, Sealift in Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm: 7 August 1990 to 17 February 1991, CRM91-109 Alexandria, Va.: Center for Naval Analyses, May 1991). The first forces hit the ground in Saudi in less than 48 hours. Now, based on the reports i'm hearing, the current buildup in N.O. is... at best... along roughly the same time frame. The difference of course it the forces were travelling 6000 miles to get to Saudi, and a fraction of that for this situation.

IMO the evidence points to a serious 'misunderestimation' somewhere along the line .

Part of the problem is that the LA governator should have requested federal forces IMMEDIATELY, and she didn't (still hasn't to my knowledge). Reserve callups are good for longer term but you can't rapid deploy reservists... just doesn't work.

Part of the problem is the Mayor of N.O. didn't bother to REALLY try to get his city emptied (I love the picture of hundreds of N.O. school buses all parked in neat rows... buses that COULD have been evacuating those without the means to get out themselves). Of course now he's screaming like a girl and blaming everyone else for something he bears some responsability for.

Part of the problem is that the entire government from G.W. down was slow in realizing the enormity of the problem... and that is something I just don't understand, and I have yet to hear a viable explanation from anyone.

Part of the problem is the criminals and dumasses who decided to stay in N.O... either to cause problems or because they were 'too tough' to be skeered by a lil ole storm. The first category should be shot, the second have probably learned their lesson I imagine.

I'm sure there's more blame to go around, like all the city planners in New Orleans over the last 100 years who've trusted to luck to protect them from a Cat4 or 5 hit... when they knew DAMN WELL that it was just a matter of time.

[ 09-02-2005, 06:57 PM: Message edited by: Thoran ]

[Gangrell]

Originally posted by John D Harris: Thislogic is ASSININE(as in having the qualities of an ASS) There about 130,000 troops in Iraq there are over 1,500,000 troops that can be called up or on active duty? 1,500,000 minus 130,000 that leaves 90% still availible to be deployed. Now that I got the BS crying Politic crap out of the way.

You know, it's really quite funny how you see my logic when that was a joke to begin with. I'm quite aware of the number of troops that are in Iraq and the like, but if I really wanted wanted to bitch politically, I would've gone to the Current Events forum to do a few rounds with Timber.

So please, forgive me for being an ass, you d*ck (qualities of a contemptible person).

Anyway,

It looks like the disease aspect of the problem with the flooding is increasing badly. Bodies that weren't sealed in the air tight-concrete caskets they use today are actually coming up out of the ground due to the flooding. I've seen some photos (well, glimpses) of it on television. No, I'm not talking about people who've died from the flood either, I mean skeletons.

Couldn't imagine being swept up in all that down there.

[Chewbacca]

Hey even the Commander In Chief said today aid efforts in New Orleans so far were unacceptable. He also said we are going to fix it. I'm sure there is enough blame to go around for all parties. Federal, State, and Local.

I do think evacuting 75,000- 130,000 people with only 1-3 days advanced warning takes far more resources than a single medium sized city could ever manage.

[Memnoch]

Did you guys hear the mayor of New Orleans ranting on and on about lack of federal support on CNN? There may be an element of CYA in that, but there's probably also an element of truth - the army can use the Rapid Deployment Force to deploy to any part of the world within 36 hours but it's taken forever to get troops to New Orleans. And why didn't anyone think to put some security into the Superdome and to the Convention Centre before herding 100,000+ people in there?

Just seems like the entire organisation and coordination effort between local, state and federal resources was a complete shambles. I'm sure someone's going to be held accountable when the dust clears on this.

[Memnoch]

Interesting story from the Guardian.

'It reminds me of Baghdad in the worst of times' . Julian Borger in New Orleans Saturday September 3, 2005 The Guardian . The sprawling convention centre in New Orleans was no doubt once a source of civic pride, but yesterday the concrete and glass edifice was a symbol of national shame, giving out a stench that could be smelt two blocks away. . A dense mass of people - perhaps 20,000, almost all of them black - packed the cavernous building and filled the surrounding pavement, sitting amid debris left by Hurricane Katrina and the rubbish accumulated in four days of waiting for help. . A knot of police officers, mostly white, watched the throng warily from a small side road, armed with rifles and pump-action shotguns. More police watched from the Greater New Orleans Bridge high above. . They were the only sign that the official world was aware of the plight of the crowd below - and that was as close as they got. The previous day, some military rations and water had been dropped by relief workers from the bridge on to the car park. It was as if being poor and black was a contagious disease. . If so, it was becoming a self-fulfilling dread. Inside the building, the toilets had become blocked after the first day, and by yesterday the air wafting from them was so noxious it felt like a blow to the face. . A policewoman near the centre brandishing a shotgun said she had no news of the promised help from the army and the National Guard. "They've been saying they're going to send in troops since day one. We haven't seen anything yet." . Walking from her informal checkpoint to the crowd across the road was like crossing a boundary between the first and third world. On the other side, many people were clearly too ill to walk and several seemed close to starving. . Inside the centre, no one could understand why they were being treated in this way. "If you can drive in like that, how come they can't come and get us?" Henry Carr, a 38-year-old furniture salesman, said. . Everyone was frantic to know whether the buses would turn up. For days, they had been told to stay in the centre so they could be picked up, but the promised transport had failed to materialise. Buses had arrived for the people trapped at the Louisiana Superdome stadium, a mile to the north, but it seemed the convention centre, a lesser landmark, had been forgotten. The latest rumour was that the buses would come later that afternoon, but that would already be too late for up to a dozen people who had died waiting. . Two of the bodies had been dumped by an employees' entrance. They were both old and frail women. One had died in her wheelchair; a blanket had been thrown over her face. The other woman had been wrapped in a sheet. . A man walked past the bodies dragging a pallet loaded with big bottles of ginger ale, some plates and a frying pan. To the rest of America watching the tragedy unfold on their televisions, he was one of the looters, denounced by President Bush. . But to the people inside the convention centre, he was one of a band of heroes keeping them alive. "The people who were going into the stores would give us water and food, said Edna Harris, Henry Carr's aunt. "There would be ladies with babies and they had no milk, and these guys would break in and bring them milk." . Kyle Turner, a 28-year-old dishwasher, was looking for some clean water. "My son is six months old and we got no milk. I just got two cans of powdered milk, and I need some water for it," he said. . In addition to the constant squalor, the thousands left in the centre had to contend with the fear of gangs of young men. Everybody talked about it. One woman said she held her children's hands tight all night because there were stories circulating of thugs who took young girls and boys to the upper stories of the centre and raped them. It was impossible to confirm the rumours but there was no mistaking the fear they inspired. . By late morning, a possible sign of hope had arrived. A lone soldier stood by the side of a red civilian pick-up holding a rifle and talking to some of the stranded civilians. He would not give his name, but the patch on his shoulder indicated he was from the 101st Airborne, an elite division which has spent much of the past two years in Iraq. "Kind of reminds me of Baghdad in the worst of times," he said shaking his head. Then he got into his pick-up and drove off. . William Schaefer, one of the few white men in the crowd, looked on in disgust. "We're dying one, two a day here. Why don't they come for us?" . Source: Guardian

[ 09-02-2005, 11:31 PM: Message edited by: Memnoch ]

[Sir Degrader]

Looting for your family to survive is one thing. Looting so that you can get a 4000 dollar television is another. A .223 round to the head is the best deterrance for that type of crimminal behavior.