It's not the government's job. The government's job is to govern. Organizations like FEMA and the CDC are set up to deal with disaster relief. They're PART of the government, but not the whole.
I think there is a real clash of cultures here. From where I'm sitting, it *is* the government's job to provide disaster relief and prevention, just as it's the government's job to provide health care, education (primary, secondary and tertiary) and social welfare at adequate levels to ensure that everyone has a reasonable standard of living and has access to services despite not being able to afford them in a private system. It's what you pay your fucking taxes for.
Why aren't the people of New Orleans doing something about it besides sitting around and dying? If you can't walk, crawl. If you can't crawl, swim. If you can't swim, make a raft.
It's not that simple. If you didn't have the recourses to get out of the city before the hurricane, if you had some kind medical condition before everything went to hell, you're going to be in a much worse physical condition now. My guess is that it's simply not physically possible for a lot of people to walk out of the city. Especially considering that most of the place is flooded and the roads, the ones that aren't, are damaged. I've got enough medical issues that, at the best of times, I'd have a lot of trouble walking for a day. Not physically possible. It's not as simple as 'walk out of the city'. And even if you did, where, exactly, are you supposed to go? Are you supposed to keep walking north until you find someplace that wasn't hit by the hurricane?
People are waiting to be evacuated because they have no other option.
Most people don't know that making a distillation still would purify water. Most people would assume that there's so much shit and chemicals and crap in the water that it wouldn't be safe to drink after boiling it. It's no wonder that they're waiting for water drops. They can't do anything else.
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Date: 2005-09-03 12:00 am (UTC)I think there is a real clash of cultures here. From where I'm sitting, it *is* the government's job to provide disaster relief and prevention, just as it's the government's job to provide health care, education (primary, secondary and tertiary) and social welfare at adequate levels to ensure that everyone has a reasonable standard of living and has access to services despite not being able to afford them in a private system. It's what you pay your fucking taxes for.
Why aren't the people of New Orleans doing something about it besides sitting around and dying? If you can't walk, crawl. If you can't crawl, swim. If you can't swim, make a raft.
It's not that simple. If you didn't have the recourses to get out of the city before the hurricane, if you had some kind medical condition before everything went to hell, you're going to be in a much worse physical condition now. My guess is that it's simply not physically possible for a lot of people to walk out of the city. Especially considering that most of the place is flooded and the roads, the ones that aren't, are damaged. I've got enough medical issues that, at the best of times, I'd have a lot of trouble walking for a day. Not physically possible. It's not as simple as 'walk out of the city'. And even if you did, where, exactly, are you supposed to go? Are you supposed to keep walking north until you find someplace that wasn't hit by the hurricane?
People are waiting to be evacuated because they have no other option.
Most people don't know that making a distillation still would purify water. Most people would assume that there's so much shit and chemicals and crap in the water that it wouldn't be safe to drink after boiling it. It's no wonder that they're waiting for water drops. They can't do anything else.