2005-09-02 (FOX): Conditions in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina

New Orleans, 4 days after the disaster superhurricane Katrina brought upon the Big Easy courtesy of the Bush Administration's Iraq War, "lean government" which left no money for bringing up flood protection to sufficient levels as had been advocated since at least 2001, and the President's choice to shift FEMA's task from general emergency relief to "homeland security" duties and have a supporter of his policy who had no experience in disaster relief whatsoever head it:
There have been no significant resupply efforts to those affected in the less well accessible areas of New Orleans, but evacuation of the tens of thousands of mostly poor urban African-Americans stranded at the Superdome is slowly commencing. FOX reporter Shepard Smith is outside the Convention Center and reports on police and National Guard forces having orders to prevent the disaster victims from leaving the appalling conditions under which they had been stranded for up to 6 days. These conditions are further elaborated upon by Geraldo Rivera.
By that time, the Superdome and the Convention Center had become cesspools riddled with waste, feces and dead bodies; people were dying from lack of water, food and medicine, and armed robberies and gang rapes were a frequent occurrence. Donations of food, water and medical supplies were turned back at gunpoint at the city limits, as were individuals who tried to flee the city on foot; they were ordered to go to the already overcrowded Superdome and Convention Center "shelters" instead.

On Thursday, U.S. President George W. Bush was busy recuperating from an exhausting game of golf after having declared he was basically "satisfied" with the relief effort. Foreign Secretary Condoleeza Rice had just returned to office from an impromptu holiday in New York, where she had indulged in such pastimes as a tennis match against Monica Seles, a theater performance and spending 3000 bucks on new shoes in a luxury boutique. The offers of relief technology and personnel by 40 countries which had started to arrive 3 days before were to be rejected by the Bush administration for another day. Recovery of the dead did not get underway until one full week after the catastrophe, by which time rats and maggots had started to feast on the corpses.


By contrast, 4 days after the December 2004 tsunami, a major international rescue effort which had immediately been requested by local authorities was in full swing, and even in the poorest of the affected regions, such as war-torn Aceh and Sri Lanka, most affected people were being cared for, accessible casualties had been recovered, and identification of the dead and cleanup operations were getting underway.


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