Strapped for cash, some in New Orleans stay and hope

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Source: CNN

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- On a cigarette break from washing dishes in the French Quarter, Michael Kennedy swung open the door of Café Maspero, and the briny smell of raw shrimp followed him outside.

"You gotta make as much money as you can, because when we shut down -- and we're gonna shut down -- that's it for a long while," the 26-year-old said, exhaling, a dribble of sweat rolling into his mouth.

"The thing is," he continued, "most people don't have cars to leave, don't have money for gas. Pay for a hotel for that long? I mean, you have to do whatever you have to do, and I guess I'm gonna stay and work."

Though Maspero wasn't doing half the business it usually does, customers were still coming in for $2 clam buckets. A few packs of tourists, identifiable by their slightly off-kilter walk and gigantic hot pink test tubes of booze, ambled down St. Louis Street, peeking into bars and asking, "you still open?"

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/weather/08/30/new.orleans/index.html

[skooooo]

1. The government is bussing people out for free....

Don't they know?

[merwin]

7. And after they get to their destination?

[NOLALady]

10. They are taking them to various shelters in

Northern Louisiana.

[Truth4Justice]

20. Well thats when Babs Bush flys in to tell them how good they have it again....

:puke:

[Thothmes]

36. Would you prefer they have a free night at the Coluseum?

[NYC]

9. Many buses hired for evacuation did not arrive.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3462188

http://www.nola.com/hurricane/index.ssf/2008/08/many_buses_hired_for_evacuatio.html

[thunder rising]

2. So NOLA thought you were fucked last time ... evacuate on $4 gas

[bluestateguy]

4. That's why the city should comandeer the gas stations

give away free gas and tell the oil companies to go to hell.

[DIKB]

21. Sounds Good to Me! n/t

[WriteDown]

29. Not a great idea....

Many owners of gas stations are private owners. That would be like commandeering a bakery that you owned so the police could give out food.

[Anexio]

31. Seems narrow minded

So in your world it's okay for the government to steal from private business owners?

Let me guess, it's okay to steal from "Big Oil" right? Is that what you meant? What about all those thousands of mom and pop convenience/gas stores, is it okay to steal from them too? Can we clean out their groceries too while we're stealing their gas?

Anarchy is okay as long as it fits your narrow minded agenda, I suppose.

As an alternative to your plan maybe that re-elected braintrust Ray Nagin could have a decent evacuation plan in place. He's had four years to think about it and has god knows how many billions of dollars to develop a plan. I'm taking a shot in the dark here but I would think that having a decent evacuation plan in place would be better than grand theft.

[Oak2004]

34. Actually, the government *can* commandeer in an emergency

They need to compensate after the fact, but it is perfectly legal -- and far more common than most people realize -- for private property to be commandeered in a disaster.

[NOLALady]

3. Trains and busses are evacuating them to shelters for free.

I don't understand why anyone will stay.

[EFerrari]

5. Side effect of telling people "you're on your own". They stop expecting

help and don't ask. :(

[emilyg]

6. I don't understand either.

[RedLetterRev]

8. Let me say something

I lived in southern Louisiana for a while. I grew up in Appalachia and saw what poor was. And New Orlean is poor compared to that. And outside of Orleans Parish is unbelievably poor compared to that. I daresay that 95% of America has zero idea just how poor that is. If there's $300 in the entire southern end of Louisiana, that's a good day.

That translates to zero, and I mean zero mobility. There is no choice for most but to sit and hope. I can't emphasize enough how zero a chance "zero chance" of getting out really is. I've seen it with my own eyes. There's not even walking, the bridges out are so long.

I went off in the face of people who sent around those "why didn't they use those school buses" emails after Katrina. I couldn't believe the insensitivity. But I had lived there and they hadn't. But that still didn't excuse it.

Let me explain: I was a school bus driver. It took two hours to pick up 60 kids in a rather rural county . How the fuck was Orleans Parish and the city of News Orleans supposed to get a quarter million people out of a populous parish using a few hundred school buses in under 48 hours? You don't even need a pencil for that arithmetic! A moron can figure out you can't cram a quarter million people you can't locate into a few hundred school buses in under 48 hours IF you can find qualified, licensed drivers, round the clock.

Then again, obviously, morans cain't. Pore thangs. That's why we have to hep em.

Moreover, I've driven in New Orleans, many, many times. It's not for the timid; and that's after I had lived in Chicago, NY, Dallas, and LA. It's not like I was a stranger to traffic or narrow streets. New Orleans is a challenge for the best drivers, on a good day. Remember, they have drive-up frozen daiquiri bars there and open-container laws. Drinking and driving isn't just legal -- it's encouraged.

Add that sumbitch into the mix, then get back to me.

Plus, in NoLA, hey have narrow, curving streets and lots of blind alleys with drunks pissing in them. Yeah, I wanna see somebody evacuate the entire metropolitan area in under 48 hours.

NoLA? Any city at all? Not 48 hours, not in 48 days, and not in 48 million years. Any city in the entire US can be iced right now. Do you think that NOLA was a single sacrificial lamb? Ask NY, DC, Minneapolis, and Philly. The cons will sacrifice any city to pocket the difference, trading the poor for a few bucks.

There is no city in the entire continental US more than 8 hours from complete shutdown. Think about it: if you had to leave where you are, where would you go and how would you get there? And how many million people would be travelling the same route with you as you go? If you had to stay, how would you eat and survive?

Think about your morning commute, the multiply that by every single mobile citizen, then give me an answer. Where is who in that line of traffic -- IF they can get into it at all. In every weekday morning -- on your worst day -- in that great line of those who have to get where they're going, where are you?

Think about those who have no choice but to sit and stay. They either can't afford a way out or you're in their way.

[Robbien]

12. True. All these posts on DU blaming the people for not evacuating just infuriates me

They just don't understand pure poverty.

True, there was some free public transport out. But how the heck does the really poor even know about it much less get themselves to the pickup areas if they somehow managed to find out where they were picking people up?

Being poor means you have few if any options at all.

[CountAllVotes]

26. excellent post!

:kick: & recommend!!!

[celestia671]

28. He's right.

I live in La and people here are poor, not just in NO and South La. The economy has been in the toilet here since the late 80's and jobs are few and far between. If you're lucky, you can get a service related job in a touristy town.

[Desertrose]

13. You make some excellent points....

Scary as hell but true as hell.

Easy for everyone else to say get out...but where to go without $$ to stay somewhere and how to get there without car or gas money? Its just overwhelming......my heart goes out to those who are trapped by their circumstances. It shouldn't be that way and it pisses me off that it is.

Bad situation.....

[RedLetterRev]

23. Even if you have the cash and/or car to get out

if there is only one way out (like most middle-sized-to-small cities) or maybe two or three, imagine if you have to put the entire population of that city on those two or three ways out. Then where would everyone go? Imagine just a normal commuter morning with one single wreck.

Then multiply that by a hundred or a thousand fold, when it's not just the people who are going on-shift who are moving -- it's everyone.

People don't stop to think just how trapped they are in ANY city. If you live in any city -- any city at all -- you're a sitting duck.

It's really easy to sit back and shake a stick at someone else without stopping to consider just how endangered we all are. Even NY, after the towers came down and the worst was over. It still took hours and hours and hours and hours to get just "a lot" -- not all of the lower east side evacuated. What if you had to evacuate all five boroughs? It'd never happen.

So I'm hoping to give DUers with some armament when the inevitable spew of freepermails blaming the victims will overflow our mailboxes. They'll blame everyone but the fascists in charge who couldn't get our their dead arses and do their jobs. They want to give massive welfare to the the ultra-rich in the mistaken belief that the difference goes anywhere but into offshore bank accounts along with our offshored jobs. They euphemize it as "trickle down". We know better. What trickles down to the poor is always the same. It's called the drizzling shits.

[roseBudd]

30. I have often thought about the panicy feeling of being stuck in traffic as you attempt to evacuate

that panic probably makes people very edgey and trying to merge in probably isn't welcomed

[EFerrari]

15. I wish I could recommend your post.

We have earthquakes here and I live in a tsunami zone. If something happens, all I can do is try to head to my family's home 60 miles away. There's a packed backpack but if I can't use the car, there is the backpack and six animals and only enough food and water for three days on foot. Things get really simple.

[superconnected]

16. Excellent post.

[uppityperson]

18. thank you. k&r

[caseycoon]

19. Exactly! Very well said. Thank you. n/t

[lonestarnot]

22. K & R K & R K & R K & R K & R K & R K & R K & R

K & R K & R K & R K & R K & R K & R K & R K & R

[jody]

25. I fully understand everything you say but as a minimum in Katrina, NOLA could have commandeered all

vehicles in the city and evacuated those people already massed in such areas as the coliseum.

The governor and mayor had full authority under LA law to use every available resource during Katrina and they both failed.

[RedLetterRev]

33. With whom to drive them and only 3 ways out of town

As I pointed out, unless you've been there (and I have) you have no idea what you're talking about. It's just not that easy. Oh, yeah, it's really easy to sit back and say "well, they should have done thus-and-so" but when it's neither physically possible or practical, the argument falls on its ass. Still.

I suppose it's pointless to remind that most, if not all, available drivers were already gone. So who was supposed to drive these commandeered vehicles? Most of who was left couldn't drive. Many (if not most) of whom were left there were disabled, invalid, never had or needed a license.

Two of the ways in and out of the city are bridges. One is 9 miles long and the other is 17. If one car breaks down or one accident happens, guess what, everyone else behind them is screwed. It's not just so simple.

And I'll ask it again, if there were a few-score-thousand left, how where they going to get them out with a few hundred school buses? Even if you could round up enough people to drive the cars that were left (like, how would you start them? Hot wire them all? Huh???) how would you move that much traffic on three roads?

I want to see that happen. Really. These "all you have to do, it's really so simple" solutions really are tiresome after the fact, especially when they hold zero merit at all. This has been pointed out time and time and time again. Think it through; it's simple arithmetic.

Need we remind anyone that both the governor and the mayor were on the phone to Washington constantly for days, begging for assistance before Katrina hit and were ignored while Bush, Brownie, and McKook partied. There is ample photographic, email, and phone record evidence to back that up. It's not as if the governor and mayor didn't pull out every stop they had available to them at the time. They did. The next level up, the federal government, who is charged with handling disasters of such magnitude was too busy partying and playing air-guitar and congratulating each other for doing a heckuva job.

[jody]

35. LOL have a good day. n/t

[EstimatedProphet]

37. Really?

Back that up with something, because I ain't buying.

[tbyg52]

32. And I heard Nagin on the TeeVee

Admonishing people that if they didn't evacuate they shouldn't expect any help after the storm hit.

[librarycard]

11. How does Gustav compare to Katrina at this point?

Is it bigger?

[XemaSab]

17. Much, much bigger

Nagin is calling it the storm of the century.

[RantinRavin]

24. The cloud pattern of Gustav is bigger, the windfield of Katrina was bigger

Here is the advisory of Katrina right as it made landfall in New Orleans:

ESTIMATED MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE 927 MB
EYE DIAMETER 30 NM
MAX SUSTAINED WINDS 110 KT WITH GUSTS TO 135 KT.
64 KT.......110NE 110SE 60SW 60NW.
50 KT.......140NE 140SE 75SW 75NW.
34 KT.......200NE 200SE 150SW 100NW.
12 FT SEAS..325NE 250SE 250SW 0NW.
WINDS AND SEAS VARY GREATLY IN EACH QUADRANT. RADII IN NAUTICAL
MILES ARE THE LARGEST RADII EXPECTED ANYWHERE IN THAT QUADRANT.


And here is the current advisory for Gustav:

ESTIMATED MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE 958 MB
EYE DIAMETER 25 NM
MAX SUSTAINED WINDS 110 KT WITH GUSTS TO 125 KT.
64 KT....... 45NE 30SE 20SW 30NW.
50 KT.......120NE 75SE 60SW 75NW.
34 KT.......175NE 120SE 120SW 120NW.
12 FT SEAS..180NE 270SE 150SW 180NW.
WINDS AND SEAS VARY GREATLY IN EACH QUADRANT. RADII IN NAUTICAL
MILES ARE THE LARGEST RADII EXPECTED ANYWHERE IN THAT QUADRANT.

[Mnemosyne]

14. Thank you. knr n/t

[gorbal]

27. anyone know

Do they even have local buses out of the flood zone? That is scary, I really feel for anyone in New Orleans now.