Consider me boggled.

[deathpixie]

Okay, watching the SBS international news, and the Katrina aftermath footage. Particularly the stuff about people dying of dehydration and heatstroke in the streets. Can I just say one thing?

What the fuck is the government doing in terms of disaster relief? Bloody hell, after the tsunamis in December there was relief on its way within 24 hours. It's been three bloody days!

And just why aren't they evacuating people from the place and getting them to places they can get help? Oh, there's buses going out, but when you have thousands of people to move, you need more than 70 Greyhounds, people.

You see this stuff in Third World countries. You certainly don't expect it in the jewel of developed nations.

Disclaimer: I'm not aiming this at the American people as a whole, or even the various aid relief organisations like the Red Cross, although I didn't see much in the way of footage there. It's pretty much aimed at thhe government, whose job it is to deal with this sort of thing. Ye gods, Bush doesn't have the slightest clue, does he?

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_bounce_/]

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.

[nute.livejournal.com]

When it comes to the word "government" most Americans think "The president!" - because most Americans slept through the classes we had for TWELVE YEARS that teach you how our government works. For a purported democracy of the people, most of them sure don't deserve a say in it.

I have to acknowledge that yes, most of the people in the city are not there voluntarily. My personal offense is that - how can people allow themselves to get into such a situation that you don't have the resources to save your own life?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_bounce_/]

It's often not so much 'allowing yourself' which is pretty much saying 'you chose to die' so much as simply not having the access to the recourses that you need to surive. They're two different things.