The people who refuse to leave no longer have a say in the matter:
As a handful of pumps toiled to drain the water out of a sprawling city today, the New Orleans police said they would force the 10,000 or so residents left in the city to leave and Louisiana officials warned of long-term damage to the area’s environment.
The police superintendent, P. Edwin Compass III, said police officers and other rescue workers going door to door would do all they could to remove every resident still in the city of nearly half a million, to protect them from lawlessness, get them to shelters and make sure children are fed.
“If that’s necessary, we have the manpower to do it,” Mr. Compass told CNN this afternoon about reports that they would force out people who insisted on staying in their water-logged neighborhoods. “We’ll do everything we can to keep this city safe. These people don’t understand they’re putting themselves in harm’s way.
I just heard on television that the mayor gave the police and military permission to use force to remove people, even on private property.
boo
had two segments tonight on people who were refusing to leave. It seems clear that many people have no clear concept of the larger damage to the city. They still think that the rest of the city outside their immediate area is functioning. When one of the NBC reporters told a man that there might be 10,000 dead, he seemed shocked. Later, he agreed that if he was asked to leave by the military, he would comply. The second man was very elderly and seemed confused. He was out of medicine and didn’t realize that the hospital up the street had been evacuated. The reporter sent a rescue crew up to his house.
Maybe these crews should carry a video player with them…
jrlago
some eye popping reports from FEMA and LSU’s Hurricane Experts.
Read these reports, from last summer and this summer tell me how pissed off you are.
http://www.lsu.edu/highlights/052/pam.html
Then This.
http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=13051
Mike S
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any uglier. I feel sorry for the people who will have to do the evicting.
slide
Not going to be a pretty picture but it has to be done. My heart goes out to my fellow officers (the one’s that are left)for the miserable, and life threatening, conditions they have had to contend with.
demimondian
Yeah. That’s going to be a hellish job.
CaseyL
If someone told me I had to leave my house, my city, everything that gave my life structure, and I could never come back… well, I’m middle-class, a homeowner, financially stable, and I could probably find a good job in my field… but it would still be walking away from everything I’ve built, in a city I cherish, and having to start all over again somewhere else, and I would be very tempted to say “No effing way.”
So I can understand why people would refuse to leave. They’re clinging to what they have, knowing their prospects for replacing it are slim to none.
jobiuspublius
As CaseyL said. Add, FEMA’s fucktard response, the baracading of citizens in the superdome, NO’s unique history and community identity, plus a whole host of factors. The oldest parts of the city are dry. Wait till they hear what Dennis Hastert said.
Nelson Muntz
I told you a few weeks ago, you should devote your blog to Kelo. And I, a liberal Nelson Muntz, fear this is going to be too true in New Orleans as well.
The sad fact of the matter is that a rebuilt New Orleans is going to have new housing, very large but no character. Large shopping malls, with no character. Home Depots, Lowes, Walmarts, Kohs, Safeway, Macys, strip malls, McDonalds, Burger Kings, Targets, Carls Jrs, … and a lot of the local architecture, local street layouts, local businesses, local flavors will just be gone.
But. But here, my “responsible grownup republican” friend John Cole, here is where you get on CNN, and Nightline, and testify in front of Congress as you carve out a niche on the Kelo-watch.
Help make sure that the various government entities don’t Kelo Louisiana in the name of the Fortune 500.
I WENT BACK TO OHIO
BUT MY CITY WAS GONE
THERE WAS NO TRAIN STATION
THERE WAS NO DOWNTOWN
SOUTH HOWARD HAD DISAPPEARED
ALL MY FAVORITE PLACES
MY CITY HAD BEEN PULLED DOWN
REDUCED TO PARKING SPACES
A, O, WAY TO GO OHIO
WELL I WENT BACK TO OHIO
BUT MY FAMILY WAS GONE
I STOOD ON THE BACK PORCH
THERE WAS NOBODY HOME
I WAS STUNNED AND AMAZED
MY CHILDHOOD MEMORIES
SLOWLY SWIRLED PAST
LIKE THE WIND THROUGH THE TREES
A, O, OH WAY TO GO OHIO
I WENT BACK TO OHIO
BUT MY PRETTY COUNTRYSIDE
HAD BEEN PAVED DOWN THE MIDDLE
BY A GOVERNMENT THAT HAD NO PRIDE
THE FARMS OF OHIO
HAD BEEN REPLACED BY SHOPPING MALLS
AND MUZAK FILLED THE AIR
FROM SENECA TO CUYAHOGA FALLS
SAID, A, O, OH WAY TO GO OHIO
Or….
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swingin’ hot spot
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot
…
or….
Some rich men came and raped the land,
Nobody caught ’em
Put up a bunch of ugly boxes, and Jesus,
people bought ’em
And they called it paradise
The place to be
They watched the hazy sun, sinking in the sea
You can leave it all behind
and sail to Lahaina
just like the missionaries did, so many years ago
They even brought a neon sign: “Jesus is coming”
Brought the white man’s burden down
Brought the white man’s reign
Who will provide the grand design?
What is yours and what is mine?
‘Cause there is no more new frontier
We have got to make it here
We satisfy our endless needs and
justify our bloody deeds,
in the name of destiny and the name of God
And you can see them there,
On Sunday morning
They stand up and sing about
what it’s like up there
They call it paradise
I don’t know why
You call someplace paradise,
kiss it goodbye
Steve
It’s amazing.
Just a few days ago John Cole was blaming the mayor and governor for not getting these people out of there. But now we find, to get them out we’ve gotta stick a gun in their back and walk ’em out.
I honestly don’t blame these people. Yeah, they are uninformed, but then it’s probably pretty unlikely they have a fucking television set and are watching fucking cable news every night like the 101st fighting keyboard batallion here.
George Turner
Even aside from the health problems, you can’t leave 2% of the residents sitting in a city where 98% of the houses are unoccupied and can still be robbed. At that point law enforcement is useless, unless one of them happens to notice that the old man seems to live in a different house each night.
dlnevins
It has to be done, but it’s sad, for all the reasons both Boo and CaseyL give. I wonder how some of these folks are going to cope when they learn that their homes are not salvagable and will have to be torn down? Some of these people may never have lived anywhere else; especially for the elderly, it’s going to be a real wrench.
John Cole
You know, I find it amusing that Republicans are the ones accused of seeing everything in terms of black and white.
Yes, there are a few people who will have to marched out at gunpoint. Do you think the thousands of people stranded at the Convention Center and the Superdome needed to be marched out at gun point.
And I am not simply blaming the Mayor and the Governor, no matter how many times you pretend that is my position. I am blaming everyone from the ground up for the failure to evacuate these people in a timely and orderly manner.
maybee
I’m certain Barbara Starr on CNN just reported that the military says they will not be a part of this.
I can understand why people might want to stay. I can understand the need to get them out. But I can completely understand the military wanting no part of that.
MrSnrub
On NPR, a reporter quoted a NOLA cop who said that they wouldn’t be forcing people out at gunpoint.
More all-around miscommunication.
TallDave
The New Orleanians who have risen up against the Bush occupation are not “looters” or “terrorists” or “The Enemy.” They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow — and they will win….I oppose the U.N. or anyone else risking the lives of their citizens to extract us from our debacle…the majority of Americans supported this relief effort once it began and, sadly, that majority must now sacrifice their children until enough blood has been let that maybe — just maybe — God and the Louisiana people will forgive us in the end.
Davebo
John
“. I am blaming everyone from the ground up for the failure to evacuate these people in a timely and orderly manner.”
Just how does one go about evacuating 800,000 plus people in a timely (48 hrs tops) and orderly manner.
Can you name a single instance in history when such a feat was accomplished?
summr
I actually wondered that myself until I got an email from a
friend with a truthout article linked.
The article mentions 1.5 million people evacuated from a category
5 hurricane in Cuba, though it doesn’t give the amount of time spent
on evacuation.
The article certainly contains statements that may be considered inflammatory but I think this is also relevant:
Castro may be a nut but looks like he gets a couple of things right:
healthcare, literacy, and apparently hurricane response.
Although one might argue that it is easier for a dictatorship to enforce evacuations…
Chris Johnson
How do you expect their property to be seized under eminent domain if there are still people sitting there looking heroic and photogenic?
First, forbid any photographs or video.
Second, kill or drive off any people still defending their property.
Or do you not believe that eminent domain is becoming a more popular course of action for the administration?
Do you have any idea how difficult it would be to seize New Orleans under eminent domain if CNN cameras are happily broadcasting, live, the scene as some old waterlogged black woman is driven weeping from her home?
I’m going to lay odds: twenty-five percent likelihood that within a month, US troops will be gunning down journalists within the continental US. (That’s ‘journalists from any country’, not specifically US news. It’s already happening overseas but there’s a psychological barrier about targeting journalists on US soil)
Within a year? Fifty percent, US journalists gunned down by US troops within the continental US.
SherAn
Yes, last year we had FOUR HURRICANES in Florida. Over 2.5 million were evacuated before just one of them alone struck the coast above Palm Beach; sorry for the memory loss, but I don’t remember the name (because it’s difficult to differentiate when there were four of them so close together and two hit the exact same area within weeks of each other).
But the fact is that 2.5 million people were evacuated in less than 48 hours. BUT there is a big difference. No part of the area evacuated included a high-density, low-income area like the 9th Ward in New Orleans. Most of those evacuated last year in Florida had automobiles or other means of transportation. If they did not, it was provided for them in the form of buses.
And there is one other factor; that is, Jeb Bush was primed to leap tall buildings with a single bound because his brother was campaigning for election, and Karl Rove had FEMA primed to aid residents immediately. It didn’t come about all by accident. It was anticipated to be a prime selling point: old George is going to protect you and keep your sorry ass safe. Remember how he was photographed personally handing out bags of ice? We wouldn’t want to politicize such a tragedy, now would we. In fact, FEMA paid $30 million in bogus hurricane claims to the predominately Cuban residents of Miami (a prime voting bloc), who only had 3 inches of rain and no wind. I believe that’s called electioneering; paying for votes, that is. So comparing the response in New Orleans/Mississippi/et al., to the events last year in Florida is a poor analogy.
I will be even more furious if the hearings don’t materialize, which today it appears they will be either postponed indefinitely or watered down to what can we do to aid the victims now instead of holding those responsible for needless deaths and destruction accountable. I want to gag each and every time I see evidence of the Karl Rove smear machine in action, the phony news accounts (e.g., the WaPo article this weekend stating Blanco still hadn’t declared a state of emergency by the 2nd), and the swill ladled by Limbaugh, Hannity, O’Reilly, et al.
I saw a local, unfiltered, un-propagandized news story out of Louisiana yesterday which detailed how FEMA has advised the mortuary service division to anticipate and plan to process 40,000 corpses. No, it’s not a typo. The figure was 40,000.
Because “conservatives” (and I use the term loosely) did not want to invest in infrastructure to the tune of a couple hundred million dollars, because it wasn’t sexy and it didn’t garner more votes, we will now pay hundreds of billions of dollars to restore the devastated areas, and who among us is up to the task of assessing the loss in revenue in the meantime? Mississippi is losing $500,000/day in lost tax revenue from the gambling casinos. The ports in Louisiana and Mississippi handle more than one-third of all imports/exports; in fact, New Orleans was THE most important port in the U.S. The loss in the shipping business alone dwarfs the loss in the oil/petrochemical businesses by a factor of, I’ve read, ten to one.
So, frankly, I’m pissed at the utter incompetence of our “leadership.” And I cannot begin to articulate how I feel about the loss of life. Any loss of life is tragic, but apparently the Culture of Life crowd has no problem with the loss of 10-40,000 souls in the Deep South, so long as they’re black…and poor. You know, those “welfare queens” RR was so fond of stereotyping. If you need more evidence that the current administration couldn’t care less, consider that the entire House and Senate, and the president himself, flew to D.C. on a weekend to vote for/sign off on a bill to keep Terri Schiavo alive, but the president could not interrupt his vacation for an additional three days.
So frankly, I really want to soundly kick the asses of all the jerks who protect and defend this bunch of incompetent criminals and brush off any legitimate criticism as Bush Bashing.
Steve S
Hey, I’m just reading and responding to your blog. You’ve spent an incredible amount of time defending the President against his incomptence, a lot of time attacking Nagin and Blanco repeating the Limbaugh talking points you got faxed to you by Mehlman… and then you put words in the mouths of several people by cherrypicking a couple of quotes, and then writing a fake letter to support a false claim.
But if you want to pretend that’s not what you’re doing… be my guest. It’s your blog.
ET
Ah but they haven’t started doing it yet. There are still people who want to leave. Get them out and by the time you go back for the holdouts they many not want to be holdouts.