Hurricane Katrina

Of course, as I recall, it was some big cities in the northeast where some bearded terrorists flew commercial aircraft with civilians on board into occupied buildings. You are not safe anywhere. Meanwhile I am sitting hear listening to Navy F/A 18's from nearby Oceana NAS flying overhead (probably practicing carrier landings and take offs judging by the pattern they are flying) and wondering if I am safer with them here, or less safe.

Shelly, I am not sure whether I want to be near you in the next storm, or far away. LOL. Your luck may someday run its course.

I've lived in "earth quake" country my whole life and I can't imagine being anywhere other than here. I lived through Silmar 1971, Whittier Narrows 1987 was fun stuff, I was 4 miles from the epicenter I lost my power for the day, and lets not forget Northridge 1994, same thing no power, transformer's on power poles were exploding freeways fell and through it all....there's no place like home.
We will not know the devastation that Katrina has brought the gulf coast, my husband works out at Mobil, one of the larger refineries here and work today was, well a joke for him. The bigger concerns should be the terrible after math that those people will have to live through. Raw sewage in the flood water can bring a deadly mix of bacterial infections.
All who didn't have to deal with this should count our blessings because there are thousands who are living their worst nightmare. Sad just plain sad.

I think we should be praying for those poor people, rather than condemning them or calling them dumb son's of bitches or making comments such as "thinning the herd".

There are a lot of poor people in those areas of our country, many of them do not even own a car. Some of them may be old, or infirm. What about all of the children there that had no choice?

Try having some compassion for them, rather than criticising them.

Originally Posted by KelliH

I think we should be praying for those poor people, rather than condemning them or calling them dumb son's of bitches or making comments such as "thinning the herd".

There are a lot of poor people in those areas of our country, many of them do not even own a car. Some of them may be old, or infirm. What about all of the children there that had no choice?

Try having some compassion for them, rather than criticising them.

I'm with you sister!!

Originally Posted by KelliH

I think we should be praying for those poor people, rather than condemning them or calling them dumb son's of bitches or making comments such as "thinning the herd".

There are a lot of poor people in those areas of our country, many of them do not even own a car. Some of them may be old, or infirm. What about all of the children there that had no choice?

Try having some compassion for them, rather than criticising them.

+1

Evacuating is not an option for many of those that were in Katrina's path. New Orleans is a poor city, with a per capita poverty rate over twice that of the national average and a per capita income of only $17,258. Some 60% of its residents don't own cars because they can't even afford a junker.

There is a difference between having compassion for people who were unaware of the danger or incapable of getting out, and people who stayed to protect their material possessions.


But this:

"Mike Spencer of Gulfport made the mistake of trying to ride out the storm in his house. He told NBC that he used his grandson's little surfboard to make his way around the house as the water rose around him.

Finally, he said, "as the house just filled up with water, it forced me into the attic, and then I ended up kicking out the wall and climbing up to a tree because the houses around me were just disappearing."

He said he wrapped himself around a tree branch and waited four or five hours."


No house, car, painting, antique, or collection is worth risking your life over. Yes, it is very sad that these peoples lives are so tragically disrupted by a natural disaster, but to deliberately take the chance with your life and stay when you DO have the ability to leave is dumb. They could have left and taken someone who otherwise couldn't leave with them.

Not to fuel the fire but did anyone see that they were making use of city buses for free transportation to those who did not have any transport of their own?

My comments were not of the people who had no choice but were for the stubborn people that chose to stay. There was a man vacationing in NOLA that said he wasn't going to leave. He would have some fun at the bar, go back to his hotel room, order a nice dinner and watch some movies. That is the kind of person that deserves what they get.

To the uninformed, ill-prepared, or people without means of getting away I hope they made it through alright.

Originally Posted by Ken Harbart

+1

Evacuating is not an option for many of those that were in Katrina's path. New Orleans is a poor city, with a per capita poverty rate over twice that of the national average and a per capita income of only $17,258. Some 60% of its residents don't own cars because they can't even afford a junker.

That comes out to $8.29 per hour. That is above minimum wage and is what I consider to be average, substandard, but average.

I'm not insensitive to people who could not evacuate. But I have a hard time being sympathetic to people who were able to evacuate and chose not to do so. These people live below sea level and had ample warning of an impending Category 5 storm. The Louisiana Superdome was made available to all those who chose not to evacuate. It has a capacity of about 70,000 and only 10,000 chose to use it. And while the roof partially failed, no one died there from flood or falling/flying debris. On the other hand, people who chose to remain in their homes, knowing what was coming, used precious resources to evacuate them from their rooftops, resources that could and should have been used to accommodate those who were not able to evacuate in the first place. At some level, we all need to take a bit of responsibility for ourselves and to own our choices.

Having said all of that, of course I feel for those poor people in New Orleans (and elsewhere too), 80% of which is under water at this point, whatever choices they made. No one asked for this tragedy. Most likely there will be no way for them to even assess the damage for several weeks, much less attempt to rebuild their shattered existences which could take forever.

Ya know, chicken little, as annoying as that little clucker was, was in essence, correct.

The sky IS falling. It's always falling somewhere on someone.

The thing is, there is SOOOOOOO much of it that it may NEVER get a chance to fall on you. Then again, you may attract falling sky particles like a magnet does iron filings.

What you may wonder, is my point? It's a good question. Were I not myself already fully cognizant of it I would be myself asking myself that very question. It's a good point, as you'll momentarily see, and one that I suspect many people have simply overlooked.

It's easily missed because it's so very much in front of us. It never, the point I'll be making shortly in case you've lost track of the point I'm making about the point I'll be making, is out of sight, not even for a moment. It is so much a part of your daily lives that it is no longer recognized. Makes me wonder what else I don't see for its familiarity, its commonality. That, however, is yet another point that I will, perhaps, address at some other point in time.

Ya see, Faithful Fauna Readers, there is really only ONE guarentee.

It's got nothing to do with taxes and most likely very little to do with death.

The plain and simple is that one day, a day which NO ONE can know in advance of its actual arrival, we go somewhere else. These shells no longer function and whatever makes us who and what we are is no longer accessable to those still in this here and now.

We don't know when it's coming, just that it is.

What you do with the time between the arrival of your departure and now is the ONLY control you have.

Be nice, be mean, whatever you do, remember that YOU have chosen to do so.

If you're poor and live in a flood plain, that's unfortunate but could be changed. If you're rich and unhappy in your penthouse, that too could be changed. If YOU decide to do so.

Now, if you're too stupid to know that living in a flood plain is NOT safe, if you REALLY just don't get it that just because it hasn't flooded in the last 20 or 50 years but it did regularly for the last 10,000 years, then I feel some pity for you. I also hope that you CHOOSE to improve your situation but I will not shed a tear if you don't. It's NOT my decision to make for you.

If, on the other hand, you're too lazy or scared to move someplace where natural disasters of this nature do not occur, the too damn bad for you.

When it comes right down to it, no one does ANYTHING that they do not WANT to do. It may be the lesser of two evils, it may be, to quote a great author in a poor fashion, the guy going to work, eeking out one more paycheck for his family all the while knowing that he's dying of cancer, doing what he can for his family because he wants to. It really doesn't matter what it is. When you REALLY come right down to it we all do what we do because WE decided that the action we were about to take was what, for whatever reason, we WANTED done. Good, bad or indifferent, we each of us make our own minds up and do ONLY what we REALLY want to do.

IF you tell yourself anything else, I think you are not as familiar with the truth as you might think.