I know many people feel like it’s a bad comparison, apples/oranges situation (or that it’s just plain poor taste) to bring up 9/11 in relation to the debacle in New Orleans. But I can’t stop focusing on one particular point my brain will not let go of. Indulge me.
At a quarter to nine in the morning on 9/11, I was in my apartment in the Lower East Side two blocks from the Williamsburg Bridge, and was eyewitness to each tower hit and both collapses, and everything that unfolded from those moments on. Ten minutes after the second tower was hit the airports were shut down. Five minutes later, all subway and bus routes heading downtown, eliminating every mass-transit option for the eleven o’clock call for a full evacuation of lower Manhattan. By eleven thirty Triage units had been erected on the West Side highway, supplies were arriving, the police mobilized, the National Guard in tanks rolling down Canal Street. By noon the evacuation of lower Manhattan was nearly complete, and the area surrounding the Trade Center had been cleared—to the very best of their ability--of everyone but emergency workers. I watched the exodus of the evacuees at the base of the bridge. Police were on hand to give directions, instructions, answer questions, and quell fear. The Red Cross handed out bottled water to the tens of thousands of people who were making their way across the bridges on foot. Since nearly everyone had lost service on their cell phone, officials were allowing people who worked in or near the towers to use their satellite phones to call loved ones and let them know they were alive.
In three hours. It took three hours to get upwards of a half a million survivors and residents in danger off of an island--BY BOAT AND ON FOOT! After a SURPRISE attack!
And these fuckers have the nerve to blame shift and evade their responsibilities and continue to sit back and do nothing after having had at least a MINIMUM of a week to prepare for the Katrina’s potential touch-down (in a city well-documented as being unable to survive such) and days and days and days to do SOMETHING, ANYTHING AT ALL, after it actually happened.
Sure, some argue that you can’t compare the two. We hadn’t had 9/11 yet, we weren’t at war yet, and our preparedness and relief programs had not yet been stretched as thin. To which I say…EXACTLY, you stu-pid fuck-ing mor-ron. Bush had only been president for ¾ of a year, he hadn’t had time to rape and destroy the programs and institutions created by and supported by previous administrations. We still had a strong National Guard and Army Reserves. We still had FEMA and the Red Cross and a hundred other emergency/disaster organizations operating at their full potential. We still had money in the bank, because we hadn’t given it all away in tax incentives for the rich.
Which is how Georgy could show up at ground zero fucking three days later talking bullshit about bravery and heroes and justice, and pretend like he had a single goddamn thing under control, and claim to have had fuck-all to do with any rescue attempts, relief efforts, and a very successful evacuation of the area…oh, he was able to look like a real winner all right. First rate presidential material. Thanks to the leaders who had already taken care to prepare for such things all those years George was a godless drunk snorting coke off the lids of daddy’s oil barrels.
So what now, Mr. Bush? Will you take credit now? Because six years later there are no coattails left to ride on, and no one to blame but yourself.
I, too have been glued to my TV just like I was after 9/11 waiting for some hope and relief to arrive. It isn't coming. I wanted to throw up when I saw Bush coming to visit and being briefed as to what was happening 5 days later. Where was he when the levee needed repairing years before? Where was he when the hurricane hit? Where the fuck was he when people started losing all sight of a future? I want to kill him. I was hoping that the mayor of New Orleans would knock him out when he met him today...(he gave the most heartfelt speech last night) I really felt his pain at the idea that the government just didn't care and the whole shebang just broke down. If you get a chance try to listen to his interview with a radio station.
In relation to 9/11 I agree that the response was instant in that respect and it's as if the people of New Orleans are just throw away people. I am so outraged and depressed at the lack of organization and response to such a devastating event. I feel helpless and depressed too.
Oh Miss Holly. I hear you. And yes, when Mayor Nagin went off the way he did...it broke my heart and gave me strength at the same time. It also proved the point about how it is the direness of the situation that is causing people to freak out, not the people. Know what I'm saying? I was like, okay ya'll... see? Even the MAYOR has lost his shit. A reasonable, responsible, educated man of means, who's sitting in an office with food and water--HE's lost his shit. What do you expect from people starving to death IN shit? Drowning IN shit? And yeah, I too was waiting (hoping, praying) for Mr. Nagin to give Bush a Cajun-style ass whooping when he arrived yesterday afternoon. For ALL of us. Too bad he'd regained his composure by then.
And the 9/11 response comparison...look, I'm not so naive to see all the ways in which a direct comparison doesn't jibe. First, the danger that day was not ongoing. We were hit, the damage was done. And then there's the truth we continue to grieve over to this day...there was no need for an extended rescue plan: everyone who was trapped, and everyone who was trying to rescue them, were dead by ten o'clock.
Second, it was a beautiful sunny day, if you recall. Seventy two degrees, puffy clouds, crisp air. To say, nothing to impede immediate response to the site. The rest of the city was fine in relation. Clear roadways and highways. An island flanked with bridges, so people were able to evacuate to Queens and Brooklyn and the Bronx. Ferry boats and water taxi's and barges to escort people to New Jersey and Staten Island. The same day.
That's a very different situation from a storm that raged for two days, that caused flooding and downed electrical wires and massive mountains of rubble which made roadways impassable miles and miles away from the city line. This disaster is a very different beast in every respect. There was simply no way to get to those people. AT FIRST. I think we all understand that.
The thing I've got stuck in my craw isn't that I think there could have been a 9/11-style response to the storm. It's just...jesus, you know? Where--the--fuck--was--ANY--rescue effort? Not while the storm raged, and never mind all the woulda's and shoulda's and coulda's about budget cuts and levee repair. Even if you take that out of the equation and focus on *after* the storm hit. When we could see, visually see the total devastation, when we KNEW thousands had died and more would die each passing hour, why wasn't every available resource, all army, navy, marines, every relief and rescue organization, why weren't they AT LEAST as near as they could get to the city, so they could say "We're here! We're coming! Hang on!" and fucking mean it. Because we had to wait a week for money to be released from Washington? (And, I still can't stop spitting nails, Bush didn't even GO BACK TO WASHINGTON until two days after the storm!!) As the good mayor pointed out in that interview, billions were released for 9/11 and tsunami relief "lickety quick".
My sickness comes from that fact that...Goddammit! I saw an immediate response to a severe crisis WITH MY OWN EYES. I saw what what our police and reserves and relief organizations are capable of. They are really, really, really fucking good at saving lives and restoring order. If New Orleans had a quarter of the level of response things never would have become as bad as they have, hundreds of lives would have been saved, and the chaos would have been averted.
G came up with a solution a few days ago, that Bush loose a digit per hour until every living soul has been evacuated. When he's got no more fingers and toes, on to Laura, then the girls...that image brings me great joy. G'head, try it. See? Nice, right?
Posted by: antigeist at September 3, 2005 11:04 AM