<p>I can understand desperate hurricane victims raiding stores for necessities (food, water, etc.) I can even understand opportunistic but terribly impoverished people looting stores for luxuries (perhaps even reasoning that the floodwaters may eventually destroy these goods anyway, so why not take them while they’re still available.) </p>
<p>Harder to understand are the accounts and photos of uniformed police themselves looting luxuries.</p>
<p>But the idea of that looters are attempting to break into a Children’s Hospital where staff are still trying to care for sick children under the most difficult conditions…it just seems unspeakably horrible…it says something quite terrible about the breakdown of community and order.</p>
<p>And the idea that the police and National Guard are stretched too thin to be able to respond…I find this unspeakably sad. Apparently there are police who have time to loot big-screens TVs but not to commandeer boats or whatever it takes to get to the hospital and help secure it from the looters trying to break in. </p>
<p>I can’t begin to imagine the distress of the parents of the children in the hospital.</p>
<p>And I can’t help thinking that the US would have a lot more resources to help restore order and safety if the president hadn’t insisted on invading Iraq and getting so much of our country’s forces mired over there.</p>
<p>I can’t remember the last time I saw uniformed police looting a Third World city in the midst of natural disaster, but I’m sure if I work at it, I can come up with one.</p>
<p>“But the idea of that looters are attempting to break into a Children’s Hospital where staff are still trying to care for sick children under the most difficult conditions…it just seems unspeakably horrible…it says something quite terrible about the breakdown of community and order.”</p>
<p>I’m afraid that this isn’t a matter of the breakdown of civlization; it is human nature (at least the nature of some humans) freed from typical constraints.</p>
<p>Click on “Katrina’s aftermath (Times Picayune)” in the photo gallery and then look at photo #5, which has the following caption. </p>
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<p>There have also been published reports of a police officer carrying off a large-screen TV.</p>
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<p>With or without explicit permission, it would certainly be reasonable for police to commandeer and distribute food, water, diapers, and other emergency supplies.</p>
<p>It seems unlikely that DVDs and large-screen TVs could have been “essential emergency supplies,” especially in a city without power!</p>
<p>Well, with all due respect, neither that photo nor the caption make it clear that the officer was stealing those dvds. I will give them the benefit of the doubt and believe that they recovered them from the looters whom they were unable to control. It is a possibility. </p>
<p>Re: the published report of an officer carrying off a big screen tv. I haven’t seen that. And even if it is true, certainly it would be such a miniscule percentage of the police force which would be engaged in such activities that it’s hardly worth mentioning. Look at all of the brave individuals involved in dangerous rescue activities instead. I think that’s more productive for all of us to focus on those people and not the few who may be behaving badly.</p>
<p>I agree that one can’t be absolutely certain that the officer wasn’t simply attempting to “recover” stolen property back from the looters …but I have to wonder, if so, where in the world the officer’s priorities could have been if so…what exactly could one do to “secure” the recovered property in any meaningful way in such a chaotic situation.</p>
<p>If the officer had simply been attempting to “recover stolen property,” I hardly think the Times-Picayune’s staff photographer would have found the event newsworthy enough to waste pictures on. I would assume that a newspaper’s professional photographer could find far more newsworthy things to docoment, given the overwhelming chaotic situation in the city.</p>
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<p>I agree that the bravery of the rescuers I saw on last night’s Ted Koppel was impressive and deserves praise. It seems clear that there is a crying need for more of them, and for emergency supply distribution workers to deal with getting food and water to those who are stranded. And for more buses, boats, etc. to get those stranded to safe, dry places.</p>
<p>I guess I don’t understand why the sickest and most vulnerable to a diaster of this magnitude weren’t evacuated before the storm hit. Before making landfall, Katrina was a category 5 storm and all the news outlets were speaking of a “doomsday scenario”! Knowing this, why would the city NOT have moved the sickest residents—(newborns and preemies in the NICUs, dialysis patients, patients on respirators, aids patients, the frail elderly and in general, the most infirm in N.O.) to medical facilities far out of the reach of Katrina? Surly, the current conditions couldn’t have come as a great surprise. I find it reprehensible in the extreme that the city left these patients and the hospitals staffs charged with their care to fend for themselves, with no electricity, damaged and flooded structures, dwindling supplies, and failing generators. That oversight was criminal, in my opinion, and someone should be made to answer for it.</p>
<p>They got all the rich people out of New Orleans. The people that were left behind live in the poor neighborhoods and the large urban hospitals that serve a mostly indigent population.</p>
<p>Where was the bus convoy on Sunday? One minute we see footage of hundreds of New Orleans school buses, lined up in a parking lot under eight feet of water. The next minute we see 20,000 people rotting in the Superdome. Seems like everyone would have benefited by loading up those buses before the storm hit.</p>
<p>The airlines deserve some blame here, too. Sunday was gorgeous weather in New Orleans, but the airport was empty. Why? The airlines cancelled all the flights into N. Orleans because the inbound flights would not have been profitable. That left thousands of tourists stranded in New Orleans because their flights home before the storm were cancelled.</p>
<p>Why aren’t there cruise ships lined up at the docks on the Mississippi River, adjacent to the only dry land in the city, getting people the hell out of there? Does the Navy not own any troop carriers?</p>
<p>Our political leaders need to start showing a little leadership.</p>
<p>ID, you make it sound like a conspiracy against the poor (“they got all the rich people out”). Don’t you think that is a bit of a stretch? I’m sure there wasn’t anyone on the highways checking W2 forms to see if they qualified to get out. Looking at the devastation one can’t help but notice all of the cars on the streets. These could have been used to get out. Also, look at the number of people trying to get to the Superdome now. The Dome was available to them on Sunday but they chose not to go there. Yes, this is an incredible tragedy and we must do everything possible to help these people, but to pass this off as a class warfare issue doesn’t do anyone any good.</p>
<p>“They got all the rich people out of New Orleans. The people that were left behind live in the poor neighborhoods and the large urban hospitals that serve a mostly indigent population.”</p>
<p>Reminded me of what I saw among the Dalit (untouchable) community in south India after the tsunami…</p>
<p>It’s amazing how natural disasters always seek out the poorest among us…except when they wipe out the Bush’s home in coastal Maine, or the fancy houses along the Outer Banks, or landslides and brushfires in California, in which cases we criticize the victims for living in such dangerous places.</p>
<p>Natural disasters are “natural” (relatively) - they hit both rich and poor alike. They aren’t “tragedies” - there are no “tragic flaws” among those affected.</p>
<p>But what we, as individuals, and as a society, do to each other, now that’s another matter entirely. I am reminded of a wonderful passage in the first book of The Iliad, in which Zeus notes that, despite the actions of the fates, human being could live like the gods, if they chose, and that for the most part, their ills were a result of what they chose to do to each other.</p>
<p>More sad inequities about the disparate impact of the rescue efforts for those of different classes were reported in the Wall Street Journal today:</p>
<p>Another poignant contrast: the Hyatt corporate website reports the following conditions in the New Orleans Hyatt.</p>
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<p>The poignancy lies in the fact that the Hyatt is connected via walkway to the Superdome, whose desperate inhabitants are NOT free to leave and are certainly not being “kept comfortable.” </p>
<p>(In fact, the same WSJ article cited above states Superdome crowds tried to storm their way out of the dome into the Hyatt via the connecting walkway, but were held back by a barrier of armed guards.)</p>
<p>If I might speak. I lived through 9/11. Stop the blame game and get to work. Go to your churches, schools, fraternal organizations, businesses, etc and pitch in. Collect goods if you live close to Houston-the papers there are asking for donations. Collect cash if you live elsewhere.
Hold benefits in your hometowns. Get your children involved.<br>
NOW is the time to help not to criticize.<br>
Thank you for allowing me to speak.</p>
<p>I agree that it’s a time to help, but public criticism and outcry is also important to send public officials a message that they need to commit FAR more resources to do whatever it takes to get desperate people out of terribly inhumane conditions.</p>
<p>There is nothing we as individuals can do to get the folks trapped in the unspeakable conditions in the dome and the besieged public hospitals out except pressure our public officials with our complaints.</p>
<p>Taking care of what needs to be taken care of is necessary but not sufficient. We need to address what’s broken in our system so that natural disasters are not compounded by poor planning, inadequate funding, and a failure of imagination. Otherwise, we’ll be doing this again, and again, and again…</p>
<p>Just last week, a speaker in my church told the tale of a man standing next to a river, who suddenly sees a child drifting by, in danger of drowning. He jumps in and saves it. Then he sees another, and jumps in and saves it, too. This keeps happening, over and over. Finally, he realizes, the only way to end this awful situation is to go upstream and find out who’s throwing the children in, and stop it.</p>