Re: OT - New Orleans

[Guest guest]

This was sent by another Yahoo newsgroup. The article is from the Toronto Star &

is extremely upsetting. I hesitate to send this, but we all have to know & act

or nothing will change.

Take care,

Jan g

Tales of woe shame a nation by ROSIE DIMANNO

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_T\

ype1&c=Article&cid=1125611421566&call_page=TS_News&call_pageid=968332188492&call\

_pagepath=News/News&pubid=968163964505&DPL=IvsNDS%2f7ChAX&tacodalogin=yes

NEW ORLEANS - Nature wrought destruction but human beings have brought disgrace.

It is disgraceful that countless people are still stranded five days after

Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf coastline, flattening communities and

knocking a major metropolis on its ear.

It is disgraceful that hundreds of state troopers and National Guard soldiers

have been deployed to protect property rather than help people.

It is disgraceful that thousands of hurricane refugees -- including the elderly,

the infirm, the sick, mothers with babes in arms, children separated from

parents -- have been essentially abandoned in the Superdome and the convention

centre, left to fend for themselves

without food or water.

It is disgraceful that not a single relief agency has any presence on the ground

as far as those of us who are here can see. No Red Cross, no federal emergency

administrators, no medical teams, no shelter officials, no angels of mercy.

That is why, beneath the damp and dank, New Orleans is seething.

That -- and not rampant greed -- is why there has been so much looting in recent

days, to the extent that police and troops have been taken away from critical

rescue operations and assigned to watch the inmates, or outcasts, who are being

treated like vagrants.

And that's all they do: Watch. Patrolling up and down the main arteries, in

their armoured personnel carriers -- as if this were Baghdad -- automatic

weapons hoisted on their shoulders, never stopping to assist fragile citizens in

wheelchairs and walkers or mothers with ailing, wailing infants.

I've seen better disaster response efforts for earthquake victims in India and

the ethnically cleansed exiles of Kosovo. Even the prisoners being held at

Guantanamo Bay are surely being cared for better than this.

Could it be because the overwhelming majority of these dispossessed are poor and

black that their very lives are apparently of less worth than business

properties in the French Quarter, deluxe hotels on Canal St., chi-chi mansions

in the Garden District, and tourist casinos on the riverfront?

Harrahs Casino, one of the largest and sturdiest buildings near the Riverwalk

Palisade, barely damaged, has bolted its front doors, while scores of homeless

families that might have taken temporary refuge therein are left to huddle on

the torn-up grass, in the dripping

humidity -- and, yesterday afternoon, the deluge of another thunderstorm --

waiting forlornly for promised evacuation buses that have yet to appear.

" We are a Third World city in a First World country, " spat out one disgusted

local as he propelled a grocery cart laden with personal possessions along Royal

St., intent on getting the hell out of the city, out of the parish, even if he

had to walk all the way to Baton Rouge,

130 kilometres northwest. Another frail fellow, a diabetic whose limbs are too

swollen to walk -- he's been unable to obtain dialysis treatment for nearly a

week -- was being pushed along in his wheelchair by an elderly friend. They had

no specific destination -- just away from here. Out, out, out. But a speeding

scout car almost ran them over in the

middle of the street.

Holzenphal, 31, delivered her first child on Aug. 22 in nearby St. Bernard

Parish, shortly before Katrina hit, but was turned out of the hospital the next

day, even though maternity ward staff kept her newborn daughter, Zoe, who

required medical attention. When Holzenphal managed to make her way back

Wednesday, she found all the babies had been

transferred to distant hospitals, some even out of state.

" I don't know where my baby is, " the single mom sobbed. " Somebody said Houston.

How am I supposed to find her? Where are the records? My house is gone, but I

don't care about that. This is my baby daughter, for God's sake! "

Everywhere, the scenes are heartbreaking, the tales of woe pathetically similar.

" We spent four nights in the Superdome, but we just couldn't stay there no

more, " said Deion lin, as she and husband, Lamond, ushered five youngsters

and one chow puppy onto an aluminum skiff -- and how the couple managed to get

hold of such a precious conveyance, they wouldn't say.

" There must have been 100,000 people in the dome, and you just wouldn't believe

the mess, the heat, even the crime, " lin continued. (Officials put the

figure at 25,000.)

" We were always being told: `We'll get you out of here, there are buses coming.'

But we never saw no buses.

" I didn't want my little girls in there any more. There were at least four girls

raped, that's what I heard. Shots being fired, knives being pulled, fights

breaking out all over the place. "

The woman's daughters excitedly come forward to recount the worst thing they'd

seen: " This man, he jumped right off the top section. I saw him do it, " claims

the oldest. " He was holding this little girl in his lap and then he put her down

and then he just jumped, killed himself. "

lin claims the man had scrawled his name and address on a sink before

committing suicide. " Apparently he'd lost the rest of his family in the

hurricane. They'd all drowned. "

There was chaotic violence at the convention centre some 10 blocks south

of the Superdome, as well.

Late Wednesday night, shooting broke out and at least one person was killed. But

three or four others apparently died overnight and two bodies had yet to be

removed yesterday morning. They were still lying on the pavement across from the

centre.

" Police won't come in here to help us out, " complained Leanne Zambloom, as she

fretted over her 11-month-old son, Jahon, frantic over the child's listlessness,

his refusal to take in fluids. " We've had rapes, we've had murders, but all the

cops do is drive around with their

shotguns. "

Then, wrenchingly, she begs: " Will you take my baby? Please, get him some help.

I'm willing to turn him over to somebody who can get him to a doctor. I'm

terrified he's going to die. "

For several blocks, to either side of the convention centre, thousands of

refugees wait sprawled on the concrete, endlessly pleading for information and

release. Insofar as they are surviving at all, it's because they are taking

poignant care of each other, sharing their

dwindling provisions, minding one another's children.

" I could never have lasted this long if it wasn't for strangers, " adds Zambloom.

It is every day more apparent that these refugees and evacuees are on their own,

to cope as best they can.

" I was stuck on the roof of my house for two days, and then a 240-foot barge

smashed right into it, " said Joceryn Moses. " It wasn't no police or soldiers who

rescued me. It was just a man with a boat, and I never even got his name.

" So then I'm brought here and I end up sitting on the sidewalk for three days.

Can't they at least bring in some portable toilets? You got to do your business,

you squat down behind a car. Is this America? Are we animals? I don't know,

maybe we're turning into animals. "

But what I see are young people taking care of old people, the relatively

healthy caring for the sick, people sharing their paltry supplies. It's true

there's crime and violence, but tempers are terribly frayed, and feelings of

hopelessness overwhelming. The only well-known

and sympathetic face these people have seen was that of the musician and actor

Harry Connick Jr. The New Orleans-born celebrity -- his father was the city's

famous district attorney for decades -- spent yesterday wandering among the

stricken.

There is also, it must be remembered, the underlying reality of impoverished and

ghettoized New Orleans, where dangerous neighbourhoods were already segregated

by more than race. And it is from these neighbourhoods, these resentful

enclaves, that many of the refugees

originate.

They didn't get out when they were told to get out because they couldn't get

out. They're poor. They don't have cars. They don't have SUVs that could

navigate the flooded streets. And they had nowhere to go, so they followed the

advice of officials, pouring into the Superdome and the convention centre.

" Everybody's angry, can people on the outside understand that? " asks Kathy

, a 26-year-old single mother with a toddler and an infant. " Then you get

different gangs from different projects who already have their rivalries, and

they're thrown in together. What do you think is going to happen? "

The men, the heads of families, are palpably infuriated and shamed by their

inability to look after loved ones. They feel impotent, and that also nourishes

their rage.

" Every time I try to talk to a police officer, I just get blown off, " grumbled

Carl , a labourer who has lived all of his 50 years in New Orleans.

" Man, I know we got us a disaster here. But how could they have been so

ill-prepared? They knowed this was coming. There must be hundreds of public

school buses in this city. Why can't they use those to get us out of here? What

would it take to give a person two square meals a day?

" We're always sending food and doctors to people on the other side of the world.

We have soldiers dying in Iraq. And they can't get help down to us poor people

in New Orleans?

" I tell you, America has let us down. "

__________________________________________________

[Guest guest]

Jan,

Thank you for sending that information. As I have shared, I am from

NOLA. Growing up there, I am fully aware of the immense poverty in

that city. In addition, there is a large homeless population, and

within that, most suffer from untreated mental illness. It isn't a

wonder why there has been this kind of " craziness " . For those who have

not worked with the mentally ill, routine, even if it is in the

streets of New Orleans, are extremely important. Most of them have

huge fears, particularly of water. They are terrified. There was

mention that caution should be taken with animals, such as the

alligators, snakes, etc, but also of family pets. They said that even

loving pets when placed in an environment that is threatening, where

they are without food, water, and shelter can become aggressive,

violent, and confused.

There was no mention of our beloved sisters and brothers that when

placed in an environment that is threatening, where they are without

food, water, and shelter can also become aggressive, violent, and

confused.

God save our souls.

Karyn , RN

Executive Director, PAI