Looting

[Sheherezade]

I grew up in Florida. My father's family has lived there for 5 generations. I remember being quite humbled by him as a teenager when I commented that I couldn't understand how people could be so stupid as to wait out a hurricane in a trailer. He looked at me and said "It's because they are poor, Angie. " He worked with a lot of those people everyday and grew up in a poor rural county. It is amazing how quickly we can forget what it is like to have no economic means. (Generation to generation....) I don't know what it is like to live in that kind of poverty, but I'm sure that for many the idea of hopping a bus to nowhere was the same as staying for the flood. Either way, they lose everything. They aren't checking in to a Holiday Inn or staying with relatives out of town. I wonder what kind of shelters they had arranged for these people beforehand anyway. They certainly don't have enough space for them now that it is over; where were they supposed to go before?

That said, I also am familiar with the bravado associated with weathering a hurricane. My brother was one of those guys that went surfing during a storm because the waves were great. I've never been in a cat 4 or 5 myself, but I know from others that the strength is exponentially worse. I know one family that left Miami after Andrew and never went back. My mother moved from the shore after riding out the last round of hurricanes in FL. I could see how someone who has experienced a cat 2 or 3 would figure a hurricane was no big deal. Also, in NO I think flooding is common - although not to this extent. Given that, I could see how some folks just thought this would be a bad storm ---- not a disaster. I also think a basic distrust of the government and police might have made the warnings less effective in the needy parishes.

Being in the area, though not locally- New Orleans is a couple hundred miles away....there were MANY shelters open and available. In fact the Superdome(bright idea that was in the begining) was only holding a few thousand people before the storm made landfall. It appeared to take people by surprise, yes, it does flood there with nearly every rain, but when it just kept coming people started running.

As far as supplies and making the effort to get them there, I know for a fact that there are literally hundreds of military active duty folks that are taking their own personal time off to drive vehicles filled with goods for those in need. What is getting listed on the news is that nothing is getting there....it is, granted it can't get there fast enough, bridges were dropped like dominos and there are only limited ways to get to the worst areas.

It sucks that the typical media would rather choose to focus everyone's anger on the fact that there isn't enough when everyone wants immediate satisfaction, ten minutes ago.

[Rapunzel]

I have spent the morning reading some awful stories. Awful.

Yes, it would've been best if everyone had left. But, I've been thinking about Boston. I have a lot of friends here who are "poor" and who do not own a car. If we were ordered to evacuate tomorrow guess what? Most of my friends could not do that. The train system would be JAMMED if several hundred thousand people attempted to use it all at once. It would be chaos - I think Boston would actually be comparable to New Orleans in the aftermath of a hurricane IF there was significant flooding (which there might be considering that an enormous amount of Boston is nothing but backfill into the bay/ocean).

So, I've been reading these stories on people looting Rite-Aid for Depends because they are incontinent. Dead bodies are lying along the floor of the Superdome. Babies and children are crying from lack of food and water. I am appalled. I know that there are ample criticisms to go around to various reasons why this is happening. So, I have been focused on what can I do to prevent my own babies ever being in that situation. Even if FEMA and the rest of the government - both state and federal - were to drastically improve disaster response from the awful lessons learned here I think I've learned the lesson that I cannot and should not rely on the government or any other entity to come to our aid too quickly. So....

I am going to gather together 72 hour emergency kits for my family this weekend. Even if I never see a natural disaster of this historic proportion come to my front door, I'll have a good stock of non-perishable, quick-energy food and bottled water for camping! I'm going to make sure we always have a few hundred dollars of cash immediately on-hand. And, I have decided to make it a rule that we will never let the gas gauge in our car go below half-full.

Jennifer

[Rapunzel]

1. I was amazed to see 5 pages of posts so quickly. I now see why (just an observation).

That was pretty much due to the environmental/climate theory tangent around pages three and four.

Jennifer

As to who chose to tough it out versus had no opportunity to leave, my uneducated guess (just from glancing at the folks at the superdome is that many really didn't have the means to leave beforehand).

I was thinking along the same lines. I was curious about that after hearing someone (federal gov't with FEMA or homeland security) saying that some of the problems are attributable to people not leaving. Sure, some of them are the "my family has always stayed and I will too" but I think a good number (most?) are people who didn't have many, or any, option to leave. I thought the comment from that gov't reprensentative was sort of a cop-out. Isn't the Superdome always offered up as a location to ride out a hurricane?

[Rapunzel]

Well, now it's not just looting. I'm in Texas right now visiting my family and, with a substantial population of evacuees in the state, there is quite a bit of coverage here that my husband is not getting up there in Boston (and, I'll bet a great deal of the country isn't getting this same extensive coverage).

For instance, an article came out in the Dallas Morning News on Sunday that stated a huge problem is that many of those people evacuating into Texas are parolees and/or wanted criminals. Many, as in THOUSANDS. I just watched the local news tonight and we're starting to get stories of evacuees in the DFW area attempting to kidnap/rape young girls in certain areas. At least one Wal-mart in the area is being used to house evacuees (it was an empty store apparently) and the police officers in charge of that facility refused a prior sex offender entry. The officers were apparently tipped off that the man was a repeat sex offender and were prepared to turn him away when he came off the bus with a large number of women and children.

New Orleans was known for its astronomical crime rate. I wonder how this is going to affect the crime rates of Dallas and Houston now that we are seeing an influx of evacuees?

Looting is going to look like nothing compared to this....

Jennifer

I would be curious to know more about this....but I read in Queen of the Turtle Derby and Other Southern Phenomona by Julia Reed...(I know, I know, what a source of information, it's a funny book about this woman's experiences being a southerner)....that the Superdome is used as a refuge for people during hurricanes. My take from what she said is that no one really wants to go there, in part due to the other people who end up there and the fact that people have been held there and not allowed to leave. It's been a while since I read it, but I'm thinking that some of the people who end up at the Superdome might be inmates???

[Rapunzel]

The name of the article I read is "Criminals a Concern in Shelters" from the Dallas Morning News Sunday, September 11, 2005, page B1. Some excerpts:

State officials say they are well aware they have a large influx of people who are in some stage of the Louisiana criminal justice system. There are nearly 14,000 people on parole in New Orleans and its surrounding areas, Louisiana officials said, and 4,500 registered sex offenders were living in the 14 parishes hit by Hurrican Katrina.

No one knows how many of those past offenders are in Texas.

State officials are transferring databases of parolees and probationers from Louisiana to Texas so all relevant data will be available. Toll-free numbers have also been set up in Louisiana and Texas for parolees or probationers to notify officials of their whereabouts.

Those efforts do not include people who are out on bail. The local court system is still struggling to recover, and the governor has suspended court proceedings throughout Louisiana through Sept. 25.

A New Orleans man was arrested Tuesday while staying with distant relatives and charged with sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl.

Wow - 4,500 registered sex offenders in New Orleans!!! Holy cow! Is that a normal number for a medium-sized city in the U.S.?!

Anyway, the local television news reports are now reporting attempted sexual assaults in the area by evacuees who are registered sex offenders and have been 'rescued' and sent to the DFW area.

It would appear from the article above that it's not inmates that are causing the problems - it's people who have "served their time" and are on parole/probation.

Jennifer

[Rapunzel]

A postscript on the looting:

http://www.city-journal.org/html/15_4_new_orleans.html

Just plain looting was rampant after Katrina—and most of it took place before floodwaters rose. (As of late September, police had arrested about 400 individuals in the aftermath, one official told me—more than half of them for alleged looting. In an emptied city with only a few thousand holdouts, that’s a significant number.)

“Looters seemed to rage almost at will, clearing out boutique clothing shops and drugstores alike,” the Times-Picayune reported on August 31. In a separate article: “Looting . . . was so widespread Wednesday that police were forced to prioritize their overwhelmed enforcement effort.” In yet another article the paper reported: “[O]ne New Orleans cop . . . loaded a shopping cart with a compact computer and a 27-inch flat screen television. Inside the store, the scene alternated between celebration and frightening bedlam.”

The Times-Picayune cataloged the extent of the looting nearly a month after the storm, on September 26: “Just as Katrina’s receding waters revealed acres of ruined houses . . . the post-storm cleanup also raised the curtain on a trail of mass looting that left even the most jaded New Orleans cop awestruck. As search-and-rescue crews staged house-to-house searches for survivors . . . they repeatedly stumbled upon stacks of merchandise—from large appliances still in the box to knotted tangles of hastily pilfered jewelry. . . . A large percentage of the items are still tagged with bar codes from . . . Wal-Mart, a store that was all but cleaned out during six hours of utter pandemonium the day after Katrina hit. . . . ‘The only things left on the shelves were the books and the educational materials,’ [said one officer]. . . . ‘Talk about a lot of effort for nothing,’ [another officer said]. ‘When that levee broke, they had to leave it all behind.’ ”

We may never know the extent of post-Katrina mayhem. As the New York Times noted on September 29: “A full chronicle of the week’s crimes, actual and reported, may never be possible because so many basic functions of government ceased early in the week, including most public safety record-keeping.”

Read the entire article - very grim but worthwhile for an examination of the truth.

Jennifer

I know the stuff was probably ruined and doesn't help out the businesses but it is sort of satisfying that people had to leave behind the stuff they stole. :> Serves them right.