After the Army helicopter dropped some food supplies that turned out to be just three or four boxes with tin cans of Vienna sausages on the roof of Memorial Hospital, not one helicopter came back to help the patients who’d been carried to the roof on sheet slings.
Days went by. All food and medicine was gone at Memorial Hospital. Red Cross, U.S. Army, Coast Guard, and National Guard helicopters flew over. Doctors and nurses waved frantically.
Finally, “boats operated by private volunteers began arriving and taking four or five persons at a time. The remaining hospital patients and staff – approximately 2000 people — were evacuated by citizen volunteers.”
— A partial summary of Raw Story’s stunning interview with a noted human rights attorney who volunteered at the hospital where his wife is a physician. (And read the incredible story of three Duke University students who helped people in New Orleans.)
Whew.
I am thankful that there are witnesses, getting their story told will be the hard part. Raw Story is excellent, as always.
Vienna sausage? Not even MREs?
I can see why there’d be pockets of people in residential areas who might be missed.
But hospitals?
Every disaster plan has LISTS and MAPS and PLANS for hospitals.
Hello?
No kidding susan, that was my first thought also, but then I’ve thought that from the beginning…why weren’t hospitals targeted first for much of the evacuation…just no goddam plan at all. Even people with an IQ of 50 could probably have come up with some kind of common sense plan.
Uhoh … I just saw “Shit for Brains” Fuckwad “Brownie” on my teevee …
You know. I’d like to put him and Skeletor Fuckwad and Smirk Fuckwad and MIA Dick Fuckwad in that hospital … or in the convention center..
Oh … how about this. Make THEM clean up the dead bodies and piles of feces and pools of urine all over the convention center, the Superdome, the hospitals, and on and on.
Fitting punishment.
P.S. HSUS has set up a number of styles of banners that you can put up on your sites and blogs. Even people who aren’t into companion animals will dig the fact that HSUS also does a lot in disasters for farm livestock so that farmers can continue to make a living … and they vaccinate animals against disease … very solid practical stuff. I HOPE you with sites will add one of those banners. And, thankfully — unlike the, ahem, MoveOn HurricaneHousing.org banner — they’re quite attractive.
SusanHu, I love how your normally quite civil tone has degenerated to include much more profanity– love the “F-wad” names and the “Piss Conference” creation. You speak for me!
Two things are clear from this near-apocalyptic tragedy:
One, the federal government of the United States as currently constituted under President Cheney doesn’t give a damn about the people of the United States.
Two, the so-called “ordinary people” of the United States are actually extraordinary–witness their Herculean efforts to defy circumstances and give whatever they have (time, money, or even physical rescue) to the stranded and the survivors.
Now if only that same Herculean effort can be applied to prying loose the government from the grip of the evil men who have had their grasp on it for far too long. And no, it didn’t begin on Inauguration Day, 2001, but long before that.
Vienna f’ing suasages? No water? When will the ability to feel again return. I am so numb and dumbfounded at the total lack of competancy. The people that were there MUST be encouraged to tall their stories. Every last one of them. On I believe msnbc today the helmet head correspondent wanted to know from the field reporter following George today if people(victims) questioned him why it took so long. WTF? Did she really think anyone in a shelter and safe was going to sat to someone they fear and loathe, “Hey asswipr, where the fuck were you?” Give me a break. My outrage meter is so broken. I have already seen the outrage waning, you know no starving, desperate survivors gone from in front of the cameras. The journalists(?) that were on the ground are now away from the horror and acting as if what happened could not be helped. I HATE these show boating poor excuse for human beings and I do not use the word hate lightly.
I’d give anything to have my body of ten years ago. I’d be in my car in a heartbeat and down there helping however possible.
Those Duke Univ. kids were so damn clever … the link to that story is above.
to consider cocktail weenies “emergency rations”.
Not to mention that those sausages are like ugh icky tasting. God only knows what’s in them…. probably the diseased offal, stomach contents, etc. of slaughtered animals. (Sorry if that’s gross, but it’s probably true — and that’s what’s in hot dogs and most commercial pet foods too.)
I’m not a Christian, but can’t think of a more succinct way of expressing it.
Damn them. Damn them to hell.
Just called Bush a ’21st century Marie Antoinette.’
I think the media is going to stay pissed.
He did what?! Really?! I missed his show … was listening to the radio/ and forgot. Will catch him at 9pm.
2nd husband, Keith Olbermann, is totally ripping Bush and his mis-Administration a new one on the Katrina relief debacle. He started with the Chertoff classic line: “Louisiana is a city that is completely underwater”, and went from there.
He’s probably not going to do “Worst Person in the World”, not out of respect, but because there are too damn many candidates in this administration.
If you can catch the second showing, do so. Tomorrow, I will hit the transcript and copy that sucker into my “Keepers” file.
I hope KeithO is a polygamist because I want him too.
Will you write up KO’s transcript tomorrow?
(My daughter read somewhere — she likes him too — that he’s never been married. I told her that I get this sense that, personally, he might be very shy with a woman. Just a hunch. I’m sure he has to beat them off with a stick!)
If you’ve both got dibbs, I’m open for adoption. Very little care and feeding or education required and I hardly ever kick the back of the car seat asking, “Are we there yet?” Just the back of plane seats….
Keith’s got heart, soul, wit and intellect. The qualities that make a terrific father.
Cute,very cute debraz- will you settle for a pull-out bed in DC?
Do I get a tuck in and a bed time story?
Oh alright(sigh)
(damm kids):)
In the meantime, today’s Bloggermann is in the same vein — excerpt:
No one is suggesting that mayors or governors in the afflicted areas, nor the federal government, should be able to stop hurricanes. Lord knows, no one is suggesting that we should ever prioritize levee improvement for a below-sea-level city, ahead of $454 million worth of trophy bridges for the politicians of Alaska.
But, nationally, these are leaders who won re-election last year largely by portraying their opponents as incapable of keeping the country safe. These are leaders who regularly pressure the news media in this country to report the reopening of a school or a power station in Iraq, and defies its citizens not to stand up and cheer. Yet they couldn’t even keep one school or power station from being devastated by infrastructure collapse in New Orleans — even though the government had heard all the “chatter” from the scientists and city planners and hurricane centers and some group whose purposes the government couldn’t quite discern… a group called The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
And most chillingly of all, this is the Law and Order and Terror government. It promised protection — or at least amelioration — against all threats: conventional, radiological, or biological.
It has just proved that it cannot save its citizens from a biological weapon called standing water.
Ladies, we may need to talk him into moving to Utah… 😉
WOOHOOO nice rant,Bloggerman!
NOOOOO ME ME ME ME !
wasnt he just so great!!??
The Center for Missing and Exploited Children has a page of the Katrina children who are missing their parents:
missingkids.com
BBC News has just shown a dispatch from one of its reporters (Gavin Essler I think) who was going round the flooded parts of NO in a boat filming rescues. Two middle aged men had stayed behind to protect the body of their mother which was slung in a makeshift hammock under the eaves of the porch.
Then they were directed to a house where they were told there were five children without their mother. They explained nervously that she had needed oxygen to breathe. Then the crew found the mother’s body in a bedroom. They loaded the five silent kids into their boat with the neighbour who had alerted them and waded through the water to get them to an overpass where helicopters were doing evacuations.
Afraid no link yet but I hope those children are safe and together and getting help for the trauma.
Oh, and then they have to face the horror of the foster care system….I hope beyond hope that they find family members for all of these children who will take them in — I cannot imagine what it would do to a psyche to have suffered what htey have and then be foisted off on the system once again — especailly if they are old enough to realize that it was the ystem that fucked them over in the first place….
you all have been so wonderful to keep learning from. It has been so fast moving for everyone…the news I mean. I am amazed as to what has happened to just everyone. I applaud you all….thanks…
Yes, weren’t they smart to plan that hurricane? Conniving little devils.
I was watching the elder Bushes at a shelter today. He got down and hugged and kissed children. She stood straight, smiled down at them, didn’t touch them.
hugging and kissing little children is his thing.
It crossed my mind. (Being an avid reader of Rigorous Intuition.)
What is Rigorous Intuition?
Susan, Rigorous Intuition (on our blogroll)is a conspiracy theorist’s dream, and an anti-conspiracy theorist’s nightmare. 🙂
I’m glad you got that, I was just going to comment on it myself.
Poor Georgie jr, daddy’s face, momma’s black heart and soul.
Too bad he didn’t get any of Dad’s brains. Nor mom’s. Guess alcohol and um, “partying hard” ..ahem.. takes a toll.
The Bush’s are a perfect case story for the Inheritance Tax on multi-millionaires. With money comes power, and if you aren’t capable of earning it on your own, …
GEE BAR! All us underprivileged people are SO GRATEFUL to be spending WEEKS in a FUCKING STADIUM. Maybe we can see a free football game? NO ? never mind-but thanks for the vienna sausage! <bitter grin>
The Bushes are on right now. I cannot believe the words coming out of that $#$#’s mouth. She practically repeated what Susan just wrote. I just wanted to slap her. her favorite two words, “those people”. Larry asked her what she says to the evacuees and she started talking about all the wonderful people of Houston. She doesn’t talk to them. THAT would be beneath that cold bitch. Sorry, I loathe her, passionately.
On a lighter note girls, Keith and I email all the time. LOL! The funny thing is all his replies are the same??!!??lol
Keith writes back to you?! He hardly ever writes back to me. I just hate you!
P.S. What in the fuck is Bernie Kerik doing on my teevee set? (MSNBC)
Yeah well what can I say? I think you are right though about being shy with women. I mean he is so eloquent on air but like I said his emails are almost always the same. “Thanks for your email. We are really busy. Sorry we cannot get back to all of you.”LOL
Man oh man. I don’t even get that much. (Is that like a form reply?)
I don’t mean to bust anyone’s bubble but Chris Floyd has a bummer of a column and I worry he’s right:
If we had Keith Olbermann and First Lady Alohaleezy leading the country, well things would be different …
When you’ve bought into the Conservative Agenda, you know the only thing that matters is
Clearly, for those 45%, the suffering in New Orleans is too much to bother with, and those poor people are certainly not ‘like us Conservatives’.
Might as well headline it: “New poll reveals, 45% of people make me sick”
Yes, President Olberman and I would have opened up our ranch immediatley for those displaced from the horror of the Gulf.
keith told Me I had pretty blue eyes,so THERE!
Nananana! He told me the same thing too! Maybe he’s playing all of us? LOLIt feels good to have a chuckle or two doesn’t it? I am so tired of feeling so angry.
comic relief?WHEW i am tired too
They are social workers. LOL
Notice Barbara’s advice “put them to work” comes before food, a clean bed, a roof over their heads. The “two social workers” spawned a demon-seed hell-bent on destroying the best social program the USA has ever known, The New Deal.
New York Times story:
Aaron Broussard on Meet the Press
They had Mr. Broussard on Dateline tonight. They followed him around his Parish, and while they replayed his Meet The Press sobbing, they also really got to tell his side of how things are going.
I haven’t watched Dateline in many years. I’m glad I caught it tonight, tho.
Thanks for the Dateline tip … will try to watch it. It’s usually a quite annoying show.
Nightline has been good too. They even did a show Sunday night, but I fell asleep before it came on.
Thanks for the nightline tip. I gave up on him a while ago when they let too much Bush propaganda come out unfiltered. I’ve set it to record tonight.
Mr Broussard is a member of Parishes Against Coastal Erosion (P.A.C.E.)
[…]Response to the Bush Administration’s June 14, 2005 Policy Statement on the Proposed Energy Act of 2005
hired a boat and went into New Orleans. He found streets with many poor black people still in their houses with no food and water. He even took 5 kids to safety leaving their dead mother behind. He reported his was the only boat in the area, and that the area was accessible to high wheel vehicles, which were not being used for relief. Finally a few pick-ups entered the area but they were just full of armed troops and brought only guns not relief. As the only doctor in the area for a week put: Medicine and doctors are needed, not guns.
Apparently there are now 60,000 armed troops now patrolling New Orleans looking for the looters that CNN keeps harping on about. It seems the relief effort still lacks a focus one week on, and people are still dying. All of this as questions are now being asked about the scope of lawlessness (well at least in the foreign press).
The BBC World team later did a piece on smaller forgotten comunities where people have no medicine or doctors to treat their week old open wounds.
Damn, how I wish we hadn’t won the revolution. We’d all be like Canadians, and the people of New Orleans would have been rescued.
Wouldn’t that be the French Indian War?
I meant the one with George Washington and those guys. And we’d be under British rule / then like Canada is now….
But, it’d be alright if Canada had whipped our asses too …
It’s like culture shock to go to Canada (which I can see out my window). Everyone is so much nicer, the pace of life is slower … amazing.
=)
I’ve been reading Angel in the Whirlwind about George Washington (great book, about the revolution and the french indian war… about the hairs width moments that could have sent us down a completely different path– check out the battle of brooklyn)…
I think of it in a different way… sort’ve like when your baseball team scores too many points in a game… save some for tomorrow… we really had some great leaders in our history and could use some more now.
Although I wouldn’t mind living in labrador or sable island…
the “other” site:
It dawned on me that the reason people can tune out Iraq and Afghanistan is that reporters are not reporting real human stories. Carnage is reported in such a dry way you wonder if any blood was spilled! But without those stories that connect us together as humans it is very easy to ignore what is happening in those two places.
Conversely we have had some great reportage on the web about actual people and actual happenings, more so than in the MSM. And we can connect to the folks left stranded. WE can FEEL a great deal about the events in NOLA. Now that FEMA has finally drug Rummy into the mix I am afraid that we will lose that connection big time.
I think this is why Cindy was so powerful a voice – she made her son’s sacrifice mean something to us.