3:37 p.m. - 2005-09-01
Shameful
I didn't realize how bad this situation was until today. I started reading everything I could get my hands on this afternoon and I really can't believe what is happening down there.
These two articles are the most descriptive ones I've read. My thoughts follow below.
Posted: 1:07 p.m. ET
CNN's Chris Lawrence in New Orleans, Louisiana
It's hard to believe this is New Orleans.
We spent the last few hours at the New Orleans Convention Center. There are thousands of people lying in the street.
We saw mothers holding babies, some of them just three, four and five months old, living in horrible conditions. Diapers littered the ground. Feces were on the ground. Sewage was spilled all around.
These people are being forced to live like animals. When you look at the mothers, your heart just breaks.
Some of the images we have gathered are very, very graphic.
We saw dead bodies. People are dying at the center and there is no one to get them. We saw a grandmother in a wheelchair pushed up to the wall and covered with a sheet. Right next to her was another dead body wrapped in a white sheet.
Right in front of us a man went into a seizure on the ground. No one here has medical training. There is nowhere to evacuate these people to.
People have been sitting there without food and water and waiting. They are asking -- "When are the buses coming? When are they coming to help us?"
We just had to say we don't know.
The people tell us that National Guard units have come by as a show of force. They have tossed some military rations out. People are eating potato chips to survive and are looting some of the stores nearby for food and drink. It is not the kind of food these people need.
They are saying, "Don't leave us here to die. We are stuck here. Why can't they send the buses? Are they going to leave us here to die?"
..........
Chaos at the convention center
Posted: 10:02 a.m. ET
CNN's Jim Spellman in New Orleans, Louisiana
I don't think I really have the vocabulary for this situation.
We just heard a couple of gunshots go off. There's a building smoldering a block away. People are picking through whatever is left in the stores right now. They are walking the streets because they have nowhere else to go.
Right now, I'm a few blocks away from the New Orleans Convention Center area. We drove through there earlier, and it was unbelievable. Thousands and thousands and thousands of people spent the night sleeping on the street, on the sidewalk, on the median.
The convention center is a place that people were told to go to because it would be safe. In fact, it is a scene of anarchy.
There is absolutely nobody in control. There is no National Guard, no police, no information to be had.
The convention center is next to the Mississippi River. Many people who are sleeping there feel that a boat is going to come and get them. Or they think a bus is going to come. But no buses have come. No boats have come. They think water is going come. No water has come. And they have no food.
As we drove by, people screamed out to us -- "Do you have water? Do you have food? Do you have any information for us?"
We had none of those.
Probably the most disturbing thing is that people at the convention center are starting to pass away and there is simply nothing to do with their bodies. There is nowhere to put them. There is no one who can do anything with them. This is making everybody very, very upset.
......................
My initial thought is "Get them food and water now! Send a bunch of helicopters and airplanes and drop stuff for them! They're starving! They need medical supplies! Why isn't anyone doing anything!"
My second, and almost shameful, thought is...This is what happens in parts of Africa all of the time. And other places.
I don't understand what the problem is with the food and water getting there. How hard is it to drop a crapload of granola bars and water bottles. I know resources isn't the problem. Every grocery store in America would give all it has right now. So what's the freaking problem, Armed bands of looters is one problem...but to deliver food and water, you don't have to land. Medical attention and evacuating people might be harder, but our big huge badass military that thinks it can walk all over anybody should pretty easily be able to deal with that shit.
Seriously. What is the problem? People who went through hell to survive this hurricane are now dying of exhaustion, infection, medical issues such as need for insulin, thirst and soon hunger, because of an inability to coordinate relief efforts. Whose fault is this? I want to know.
