Civilization? Who needs it!

[nacho]

I'll highlight the fun parts!  

So, anyway, back to buying guns...

Mayor says Katrina may have claimed more than 10,000 lives

Bodies found piled in freezer at Convention Center

By Brian Thevenot
Staff writer

Arkansas National Guardsman Mikel Brooks stepped through the food service entrance of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center Monday, flipped on the light at the end of his machine gun, and started pointing out bodies.

"Don't step in that blood - it's contaminated," he said. "That one with his arm sticking up in the air, he's an old man."
Then he shined the light on the smaller human figure under the white sheet next to the elderly man.

"That's a kid," he said. "There's another one in the freezer, a 7-year-old with her throat cut."

He moved on, walking quickly through the darkness, pulling his camouflage shirt to his face to screen out the overwhelming odor.
"There's an old woman," he said, pointing to a wheelchair covered by a sheet. "I escorted her in myself. And that old man got bludgeoned to death," he said of the body lying on the floor next to the wheelchair.

Brooks and several other Guardsmen said they had seen between 30 and 40 more bodies in the Convention Center's freezer. "It's not on, but at least you can shut the door," said fellow Guardsman Phillip Thompson.

The scene of rotting bodies inside the Convention Center reflected those in thousands of businesses, schools, homes and shelters across the metropolitan area. The official death count from Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana was 71 as of Monday evening, but that included only those bodies that had been brought to a make-shift morgue in St. Gabriel.

Nearly a full week after Hurricane Katrina, a rescue force the size of an invading army had not yet begun the task of retrieving the bodies Sunday. What's more, officials appeared to have no plan.

Daniel Martinez, a spokesman for FEMA working on Interstate 10 in eastern New Orleans, said plans for body recovery "are not being released yet."

Dozens of rescue workers questioned Monday said they knew of no protocol or collection points for bodies; none said they had retrieved even one of the many corpses seen floating in neighborhoods around the city as they searched for survivors.

Scores of rescue workers this week repeated the same mantra, over and over: We can't worry about the dead; we're still trying to save the living.

But as rescue teams across the city said they had checked nearly every house for survivors, the enormity of the death that lay in Hurricane Katrina's wake came into sharp focus even as the plans for taking care of the dead remained murky.

Mayor Ray Nagin, addressing the potential body count for the storm for the first time, said the storm may have claimed more than 10,000 lives.

In a news conference Monday morning, Deputy Chief Warren Riley said his department was "not responsible for recovery."

"We don't have a body count, but I can tell you it's growing. It's growing," he said.

As the rescue missions covered more and more ground but yielded fewer survivors, New Orleans Police Deputy Chief Steve Nicholas said that the time has come to start dealing with the dead.

"I know we're still rescuing people, but I think it's time we start pulling out the bodies," he said.

The highest concentration of casualties from Hurricane Katrina likely will come in the Lower 9th Ward, St. Bernard Parish, areas first inundated on Aug. 29 with floodwaters that engulfed second story homes in minutes. New Orleans also will likely see mass casualties, New Orleans Police Capt. Timothy Bayard said.

"We're going see a lot more bodies out of New Orleans East than we anticipated," he said.

In just one subdivision, Sherwood Forest, survivors who showed up to the Convention Center on Monday said police told them roughly 90 people in the subdivision had died.

In St. Bernard, 22 bodies were found lashed together. Officials surmised the drowning victims had tried to stay together to keep themselves from being washed away in the storm.

Lt. Governor Mitch Landrieu said "more than a thousand" people had died in St. Bernard. "When the death toll comes out, it's going to be a jolt for everybody," he said. "I'll be surprised if the casualties in St. Bernard are less than a thousand."

Even Uptown near the river, one of the few spots of dry land, a body lay in front of a white wooden shotgun double at 4732 Laurel St. The body of an older woman lay under a gray blanket, pinned down at the corners by brick and slate, adorned with a plastic-wrapped flower bouquet. Above her, a yellow cardboard sign quoting John 3:16 had been taped to the window.

Alcede Jackson
Rest in Peace
In the loving arms of Jesus

Given the length of time many had been dead, and in the water, some of the bodies already might be unrecognizable, and some may never be recovered.

Many trapped by flood waters in shelters found their own ways of dealing with those who died in their midst.

Near an elementary school at Poland and St. Claude avenues, Dwight and Wilber Rhodes, two brothers, said they had tried to save a middle-aged man and woman at the Convention Center who appeared to have drowned.

"We performed CPR on them, but they were already dead," Dwight Rhodes said. "So we took the food out of the freezer and put the bodies in."

Of the four bodies that lay just inside the food service entrance of the Convention Center, the woman in the wheelchair rattled Brooks the most. When he found her two days before among the sea of suffering in front of the Convention Center where one of the last refugee camps evacuated, her husband sat next to her. He had only one concern when Brooks and some of his comrades carted her away.

"Bring me back my wheelchair," he recalled the man telling him.

One of the bodies, they said, was a girl they estimated to be 5 years old. Though they could not confirm it, they had heard she was gang-raped.

"There was an old lady that said the little girl had been raped by two or three guys, and that she had told another unit. But they said they couldn't do anything about it with all the people there," Brooks said. "I would have put him in cuffs, stuck him in the freezer and left him there."

Brooks and his unit came to New Orleans not long after serving a year of combat duty in Iraq, taking on gunfire and bombs, while losing comrades with regularity. Still, the scene at the Convention Center, where they conducted an evacuation this week, left him shell-shocked.

"I ain't got the stomach for it, even after what I saw in Iraq," said Brooks, referring to the freezer where the bulk of the bodies sat decomposing. "In Iraq, it's one-on-one. It's war. It's fair. Here, it's just crazy. It's anarchy. When you get down to killing and raping people in the streets for food and water … And this is America. This is just 300 miles south of where I live."

[nacho]

So here's my question:  Okay, we're obviously just an inch away from freaking out in the face of disaster.  And, okay, I accept that.  I can see shooting at military helicopters, looting, etc.  

Even day three survival of the fittest shit.  Fine.

But, devolved and insane, hunting for food and water...how does it cross your mind to gang rape a five year old to death?  To rape a seven year old and slit her throat?  Is that in all of us?  I can see myself blowing away a security guard at a grocery store, but I can't picture myself gang raping a five year old.  That's not on my disaster list.  Supplies and guns, that's top of the list.  Then sitting in the window and killing everybody who tries to get in.  Very Omega Man.

[Tyson]

Wow. Suddenly everyone's conveniently forgotten exactly what the city has always tried to hide: that the drug trade was VERY healthy in that area. Big drug problems. I don't just mean recreational users and crap - I'm talking about career addicts.

Now, let's see. The hurricane comes and wipes out the city. No more drugs. Junkies' supplies run dry by the third day. Withdrawal. Cravings. Madness. Terror. Spooky things that go bump in my underpants.

We've also forgotten that, yes Virginia, there are perverts and completely fucking insane people that aren't in jail. When you have madness such as the total apocalypse of a city, those fucked up dozen people are going to go rape drainpipes. What's going to happen? They get arrested? PAH! I bet people walked right by that girl as she was being gand raped.

The problem is that the media is making it sound like all the Mr. and Mrs. Average Joes are flipping out and stuffing their neighbors in to wood chippers. I doubt that. It's just all the usual freaks having their run on a city without defenses.

Aside from that, I can imagine there's a fair share of incivility among the common people. Fathers shoving aside old ladies to get bottled water and all that. Hey, who said survival was pretty? A company lays off 10,000 to give the execs a raise and a father pushes an old lady over to get a drink of water for his family.

[nacho]

So compare to 9/11, which saw a calm and unmonitored exodus.  It's all about tax brackets, huh?  Live in a poor city, you get shot in the back in the first three hours after a disaster.  Live in a well to do area and people  calmly walk home.

It's not just the freaks in the city, it's in the Superdome (where the above gang rapes occurred) and, now, news trickling in from the Astrodome...and everywhere else.  The refugees are going nuts in the face of continued disorganization.

The problem is that we're not equipped to handle this...and, well, why not?  We spent 50 years ready for global war, and the last four years constantly screaming about dirty bombs and terrorist events even larger than 9/11.  So nuke a city and we crumble from the inside out in a matter of days.

[monkey!]

Blow up New Orleans!

Who cares about it anyway?

[Tyson]

The problem is that we're not equipped to handle this...and, well, why not?  We spent 50 years ready for global war, and the last four years constantly screaming about dirty bombs and terrorist events even larger than 9/11.  So nuke a city and we crumble from the inside out in a matter of days.

Don't tell me you think all this Patriot Act and security and all that is actually making us safer? We're all still a bunch of scared little kittens running around and waving plastic flags in front of the business ends of shotguns. You can't secure a country through legislation.

Terrorists are people who use fear as their main weapon. As long as people run around shitting their pants and buying pointless safety crap and not flying because someone with a Middle Eastern-sounding name is in the airport, the terrorists are winning. They won the minute the government started passing laws without reading them.

Patriot Act? Terrorists - 1, The U.S. - 0.

Whatever happened the old fashioned American-tough attitude? "What? You took down the WTC and put a hole in the Pentagon? Fine! We'll build the WTC right back up and then make the Pentagon twice as big, fuckers! Eat ass-hair!"

Instead it's all this "OMG I AM SO SAD HUGS AND KISSES 4 EVA LOVE HUGS TEARS!!!!111!!! Letz go buy plastik flags and cry in front of a graveyard becky becuz this is jsut so SAD *sob sob sob* I am so scared! I'm not flying on a plane any more bekuz there's terrists on them and i don't want to die! OH GOD - PARYER LOVES 4 EVA"

(P.S. I flew on a plane a week after the airports opened up and it ruled. A 737. Four passengers. Four! Sacramento to Phoenix! Schwing!)

Also, 9/11 was a a couple of buildings. Katrina was an entire region and a major US city. 9/11 didn't throw the entire city into a wasteland. Katrina did. An entire region, gone. *poof*

Don't get me wrong - they're both horrible tragedies. I just think New Orleans is much much worse. It was, yes, entirely preventable. Guess why their attempts to reinforce/rebuild/repair the levees never materialized? Money! Guess where the levee reinforce/rebuild/repair funds went! A free Snickers to the first correct answer!

[Tyson]

Blow up New Orleans!

Uhh, Katrina beat you to the punch, man.

[nacho]

I'm not thinking in terms of safety, Tyson.  This was a natural disaster.  What's the Patriot Act have to do with anything?  

I'm thinking that the government should be prepared to handle this.  We had plans in place to deal with nuclear war, man.  Fallout shelters and CD food/water everywhere. When I was in school, I had to learn where the closest shelters were.  We did duck and cover during the air raid tests on Wednesdays.  Remember the original Dawn of the Dead, they hid out in a CD supplies dump.  We had that same thing in our three major shopping malls as well.

What happened to all that?  We're still juggling refugees with no sense of authority or organization. When did we drop our local and federal plans for coordinated  response and turn into this Mickey Mouse show?

9/11 was a while ago, let's get that out of our systems, okay?  Enough is enough.  I just brought it up as a comparison because the people caught up in that didn't take advantage of it and freak out.  Though, yes, it was on a smaller scale.  So perhaps that's why.

[Nubbins]

So compare to 9/11, which saw a calm and unmonitored exodus.  It's all about tax brackets, huh?  Live in a poor city, you get shot in the back in the first three hours after a disaster.  Live in a well to do area and people  calmly walk home.

It's not just the freaks in the city, it's in the Superdome (where the above gang rapes occurred) and, now, news trickling in from the Astrodome...and everywhere else.  The refugees are going nuts in the face of continued disorganization.

The problem is that we're not equipped to handle this...and, well, why not?  We spent 50 years ready for global war, and the last four years constantly screaming about dirty bombs and terrorist events even larger than 9/11.  So nuke a city and we crumble from the inside out in a matter of days.

It's easy... the answer to how people could do something like gang rape a five year old is simple.  Because they could.

I still say you can't compare this to 9/11.  9/11 was disastrous, but at no point did the chain of authority or command completely break down.  It's not like every police and fire station within 20 miles of the WTC were destroyed and that whole area was inaccessible for 5 days.  We were on the WTC rubble THAT NIGHT... so in a sense, it was a lot more under control than this.

This is sheer Lord of the Flies type shit.  It has nothing to do with race or social background... it is madness.  It's mankind trapped in a corner with no one around to see or hear the things it does.  No rules.  No regulations.  NO CONSEQUENCES.  This is what we are people... we're animals covered in a thin layer of clothing and 200 year old laws that make us feel smarter than the rest of the animals.  Back any city in this nation or in the world for that matter into a similar corner as New Orleans and you'll get more of the same.

My step dad was eager to point a finger at the black people, but if a 9.0 earthquake leveled Beverly Hills and made it impassable to authorities and aide for 5 days... the exact same shit would be happening.  People would loot Saks Fifth instead of Wal Mart... but they'd loot, they'd rape and they'd kill... just because they could.

[nacho]

Okay, yes, it's no 9/11.  But where was the authority at the Superdome?  Those gang rapes and killings in the article weren't happening in the city, they were happening at the Dome where the authorities did have access and a presence.

[Tyson]

I'm not thinking in terms of safety, Tyson.  This was a natural disaster.  What's the Patriot Act have to do with anything?

I was running off on something of a comparable tangent. My point was that this country is ineffective in preventing Bad Things from happening. We create ineffective laws to prevent terrorism and we cut the funding from levee projects and then act surprised when the fail, as predicted way back in 2001.

I'm thinking that the government should be prepared to handle this.  We had plans in place to deal with nuclear war, man.

I think they do. I live a few miles from a nuke-u-lar power plant and we have all kinds of bunkers and sirens and all that. But everyone ignores all that for the same reason we ignore warning labels - there's too many of them. The important stuff gets lumped together with the pointless crap. People ignore it after 20 years of hearing it over and over.

Remember those video clips from when there was that terrorist alert in D.C. or something? The plan? Evacuate calmly and quickly. What happened? RUN MOTHERFUCKERS! RUN!

What happened to all that?  We're still juggling refugees with no sense of authority or organization. When did we drop our local and federal plans for coordinated  response and turn into this Mickey Mouse show?

Guess who's in charge of the FEMA? People with no qualifications in emergency response whatsoever. Not Marines. Not specialists. Fucking businessmen who helped out the Bush family. That's who.

http://pview.findlaw.com/view/2507976_1

I mean, god, this is the administration that's grouding choppers for fucking photo ops. Sweet jesus. These are the helicopters that save hundreds of lives per day. And Bush is instead using them as props.



Fucking Christ. Guess what volunteer firefighters from around the country are being used as? Publicity puppets. People who could save lives and restore order are being instead told to walk around with Bush as he pretends to know what's going on.

http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_3004197

[Tyson]

But where was the authority at the Superdome?

They were trapped in bureaucratic hell. Paperwork. FEMA wouldn't let troops in for days.

See my other bitchy posts for more.

[nacho]

I want everything written in book form so I can stop grabbing bits and snips from 500 news sources.  

Just reading that grounded chopped thing a couple minutes ago, Tyson.  The German journalists who stuck around to see that, and to see the food distribution points closed when the rest of the press moved on to the next photo op.

[Tyson]

Yeah, it's really hard to keep up with what's going on. I'm spending 3 hours a day here at work trying to keep on top of this.

Big Media is doing a piss poor job reporting the problems going on here. God forbid, but blogs are doing a good job of picking out the important information. Boing Boing and Daily Kos have a lot of interesting links and they've got e-mails and stuff from people who are actually there.

Guess how many media people are in the Supermegaultradome? One. He's not supposed to be there either. He keeps getting kicked out and he keeps sneaking back in.

The BBC has a timeline somewhere. That's all you need to read to realize how fucked up all of this is.

Some people are reporting that radio channels are being actively blocked in NOLA for some odd reason. It's like some bizarre gov't conspiracy.

[nacho]

I'm suspicious about emails since even cell service is down.  I know the interdictor guys are posting, but they're handpumping fuel into generators to keep their stuff running.  And blocked radio = towers down, which is Katrina not Team Bush.