I Spent Too Much Time Reading a Katrina Blog Today and All I Got Out of It Is this Useless Thought
I’ve been reading The Interdictor today. This is a guy who’s been holed up in a building smack in the middle of the New Orleans Central Business District since before the hurricane, somehow maintaining an Internet connection through it all and posting a continuous stream of pictures and observations from his vantage point on the disaster as it unfolded. Like most of the hurricane blogs, it starts off jocose and quickly grows grim. Last Thursday – the 1st – a NOPD officer took shelter in his building. The post reads: “The situation for the NOPD is critical…..Their command and control infrastructure is shot. They have limited to no communication whatsoever. [The police officer] didn’t even know the city was under martial law until we told him! His precinct (5th Precinct) is under water! UNDER WATER -- every vehicle under water. They had to commandeer moving trucks like Ryder and U-Haul to get around. The coroner’s office is shut down so bodies are being covered in leaves at best or left where they lie at worst.” And more: “He’s only hearing bits and pieces. The people in the city are shooting at the police. They’re upset that they’re not getting help quickly enough. The firemen keep calling because they’re under fire. He doesn’t understand why the people are shooting at the rescuers. Here it is 5 days ago the Mayor said get out of town and nobody went and now they’re pissed.”
I didn’t really see much of this Beyond Thunderdome stuff on TV at the time it was happening – it was pretty peripheral in the CNN coverage. Reading this guy’s take on the situation, though, it suddenly starts to make sense. Here’s what happened – New Orleans was for many years the murder capital of the United States. Although the murder rate has dropped in recent years, it’s still a very murder-prone town. When the evacuation happened, most of the city emptied out. Disproportionately this meant people with money and means departed, but in fact some people from every socioeconomic stratum made it out. The exception, of course, is the dumbass thugs responsible for New Orleans being the murder capital of the world. All of those guys stayed. Every other demographic dwindled; theirs remained constant. Ergo: shots fired at firemen.
I didn’t really see much of this Beyond Thunderdome stuff on TV at the time it was happening – it was pretty peripheral in the CNN coverage. Reading this guy’s take on the situation, though, it suddenly starts to make sense. Here’s what happened – New Orleans was for many years the murder capital of the United States. Although the murder rate has dropped in recent years, it’s still a very murder-prone town. When the evacuation happened, most of the city emptied out. Disproportionately this meant people with money and means departed, but in fact some people from every socioeconomic stratum made it out. The exception, of course, is the dumbass thugs responsible for New Orleans being the murder capital of the world. All of those guys stayed. Every other demographic dwindled; theirs remained constant. Ergo: shots fired at firemen.
posted by PapaDogDuvalier | 10:20 PM
2 Comments:
I've been looking in on that site as well...it kept me online for over three hours the other night while I read through his stuff. He'll have a movie and book deal for sure when this is all over (whenever that may be).
In other news, people are still dying in Iraq, things are still ugly over there, and do we hear about it? Hmmmm....quite a diversion we have going on here.
Thanks for the link,i have been trying to find something just like this. I found your site yesterday and i am glad i came back. I looks like i will have a lot of reading to do.
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