Superdome horrors were predictable, too.

New Orleans was and is a city. Just a city like any other. Did it have a crime problem? Yes, but no worse than many other cities have had in the past.

What happened in New Orleans was this: The violent, the drug-addicted, the poor, the helpless, the vulnerable, the predatory and the decent were all put in a building. The vulnerable had no means to protect themselves. The decent could only protect themselves.

The lights went out. It was hot. There was no reliable news.
Help that was promised did not come.

The food and water was scarce and fiercely competed for. The mentally ill had no medications. The drug addicted had no way to get a fix and became agitated. The dead lay beside the living.

Help that was promised did not come.

They waited. People grew angry, hungry, weary and desperate. The toilets did not work and the stench of feces, sweat, urine, dirt and decomposition filled the air and the darkness. The injured had no treatment. Rumors of violence filled the ears. People jumped from the building to their deaths.

Help that was promised did not come.

The people had been told the building was a sanctuary. Instead it became a prison. But this prison had no guards, no cells to separate the violent from their victims. This prison had no lights, no food, no water, and worst of all, no activity besides waiting.

Idle hands are the devil's workshop, and where else would you expect to see his work other than in this man-made hell? The minutes became hours, the screaming, wailing and crying became the cacaphony of the damned.

This would have happened in Milan, New Orleans, New York or anywhere if these circumstances had been replicated. Our history is replete with stories of monstrous behavior when ships are stranded at sea or when prisons riot or when people are lost beyond the realm of law and order and the situation becomes desperate.

Tell your friends that this need not have happened. Tell your friends that our government failed these people and they acted like people have acted throughout the ages in times of despair and desperation. Anyone with a liberal mind and even a tenth of a classical education could have told you with precision what would happen if help did not come to the Superdome immediately, or at least the hope of help and the semblance of order.

But these idiots running the show were running it on the fly, without a plan, without even a decent idea among them. It should not have even been a surprise how people reacted when the events unfolded as they did.

need we say more.

FEMA Outsourced New Orleans Disaster Plans

http://www.wnymedia.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=45&Itemid=35



by Wayne Madsen



shows us the company, Innovative Emergency Management, Inc. IEM for short, that should have planned out rescue and relief efforts in New Orleans. I also note that it took around FIVE whole days but FEMA finally got around to the process of privatizing bus contracts to rescue those New Orleans Superdome/ConventionCenter refugees. Those bus contracts appear to have gone from 650 to 5000 by the time FEMA realized people were AT those sites !



FEMA Urges Patience

http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=18540



“ *Convoys of food, water and ice which are arriving hourly in impacted areas.

*The evacuation of thousands from New Orleans to Texas. FEMA has contracted for more than 650 buses to expedite the state-ordered evacuation.”



Local Company Sending Charter Buses to Gulf

http://www.wcpo.com/news/2005/local/09/02/bus.html



“The Federal Emergency Management Agency is mobilizing 5,000 buses nationwide.” This is from a Cincinnati, OH bus company ; a No. Carolina Christian bus charter firm also got a contract





Community Offers Relief

BY JENNIFER MENSTER

Record Staff Writer

Saturday, September 3, 2005



http://www.hickoryrecord.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=HDR/MGArticle/HDR_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031784847098&path=



So, you can see, FEMA was ‘privatizing’ the rescue/relief effort and dawdling in this effort, rather than expediting rescue/relief that the National Guard/military could have been doing.

Also, I hear that 2000 Louisiana schoolbuses sat unused...