Troubling Reports From New Orleans
Flood waters have reached 20 feet deep in places, and this is absolutely chilling:
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said hundreds, if not thousands, of people may still be stuck on roofs and in attics, and so rescue boats were bypassing the dead.“We’re not even dealing with dead bodies,” Nagin said. “They’re just pushing them on the side.”
Safe to say, then, that the storm’s death toll will be in the hundreds, not the dozens; let’s hope it doesn’t move into four figures.
Meanwhile, even as I post this, there are unconfirmed reports of a police officer shot in the back of the head by a looter, and a hostage situation, including children, at a Lousiana prison. Let’s pray those stay rumors.
I’m not seeing any way this blog can personally, as it were, step in at this point, other than to direct you to the following listings at Instapundit, Hugh Hewitt, and Michelle Malkin for LOTS of links to organizations that can provide relief of one sort or another; I was hoping maybe Amazon would put up an Honor System box like they did for the Tsunami, or something of that sort, and maybe something like that will pop up yet. For heaven’s sakes, though, if you have the financial means and the desire to do so, give now…I’m not a real believer in karma, yet these things have a way of coming back to you…heaven forbid, one of us may be on the receiving end some day…
UPDATE 8:48 p.m. central: If you saw anything goofy going on , that was me trying to decide where to put the Red Cross banner (and I know you Safari users are still probably seeing all kinds of formatting problems – I’ve been working on it, but it’s slow going when you don’t have a Mac to try things out on)…it’s the only way at the moment I can think of to get involved. Sadly, many are already trying to politicize this thing, with talk of Bush playing golf, or being on vacation, or being to blame because so many Guardsmen are in Iraq…I would hope both sides could play nice on this one…
i hope the looting thing stays a rumor also.
as everyone knows la. doesn’t have counties, they have parishes.
it was reported that the st. bernard parish in la. was hard hit. the church i go to is called st. bernard. get the connection. so did our parish staff.
louielouie, unfortunately, the pictures don’t lie…the looting appears widescale and dangerous…as I type this, efforts to sandbag the levee have ended and 9 additional feet of water will be pouring in over the next few hours…
i just read some of fox news articles.
animals.
Yeah, that’s pretty low…
Sorry but,
i really can´t tell how deeply it is hurting me if there are people speaking of other human beings as animals. It seems to have a whole big lobby, nearly every broadcaster is hooking up on that. I mean there ar humans dying not animals.
It´s although interesting how the main interest is spent on looting and violence, whilest the reason for a breakout of chaosn, which is a not existing crisis management, is nearly unmentioned.
The other question would be, what are the responds to for instance german critics that ask for a ecologic turnaround to avoid future catastrophes? Is that a question at all?
Well, Niko, what can be done about the crisis management now? Yes, it has to be fixed, but meanwhile, people are dying, and the lawless hoodlums are preventing rescuers and other samaritans from doing their job…you’re right, they’re not animals, animals would never act this low…