Looterville

[muckefuck]

If you're looking for a little schadenfreude this morning in the wake of disaster, the crazy woman who decided to remain in New Orleans because her cats weren't worried has been forced to evacuate.

I have to confess some frustration with people who defy a mandatory evacuation order and then turn around and scream for rescue when things get worse than they expected. On the one hand, a state's power to force people from their homes should certainly be limited. Moreover, people should be allowed to make bad decisions without being required to pay the ultimate price for them. But demanding to be left alone and then suddenly changing your mind just makes matters worse for everybody.

For instance, if all citizens had evacuated their homes in the beginning, then law enforcement could basically assume that anyone on the streets who wasn't a rescue worker was a looter and take appropriate action. Of course, a lot of people who stayed behind did so to protect their property since they expected that the police wouldn't do much to prevent widespread theft--and they're being proven right. The first-hand accounts of conditions in the city today are nothing less than harrowing. What I want to know is: What the hell are the looters doing with all this crap? After all, 80% of the city is flooded and passage in and out is drastically curtailed. Are they taking it all back to their flooded homes where it will simply be destroyed? The idiocy of it all pisses me off.

Comments

[zompist.livejournal.com]

I have to confess some frustration with people who defy a mandatory evacuation order and then turn around and scream for rescue when things get worse than they expected.

Trying to be charitable here... have you looked, at all, into why people might not have left? Things like not having any goddamned car? Or no place to go? Or no money to stay somewhere for the next three months? Or an elderly relative to take care of?

These sort of explanations have been in the top stories on CNN for a week, so I absolutely don't understand why you want to attribute the harrowing predicament of these dirt-poor people to willful defiance.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Obviously you haven't read today's entry.

My older brother, who's on public aid, doesn't have a goddamn car. I guess that means he never leaves St. Louis?

I understand there being no place for people to go. I do find it a mite hard to believe that 20% of the population of the city of New Orleans does not have any relatives or friends who would put them up for a few days--which, you'll recall, is all the longer most people thought the evacuation would last before the levee broke.

[zompist.livejournal.com]

Obviously you haven't read today's entry.

So far as I can recall, it wasn't there when I loaded this page. I'm glad to hear that you've reconsidered, though I still don't understand why your first impulse was to blame the victims rather than do some research.

I don't get the point about your brother. Does he always have enough ready cash that he can get out of town on a few days' notice? Are any small children or elderly relatives he's responsible for equally mobile? What would he do if he didn't happen to have relatives in Chicago?

I have no idea how well-connected the poorest residents of New Orleans are. I don't find it hard to believe that everyone they know might be in New Orleans (or, equivalently, too far to get to-- e.g. up north). My family is all over the country, but we're middle class-- I wouldn't assume that all families are like that.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I'd only been skimming CNN and I hadn't seen many of the reports you mentioned. But I had come across many first-hand accounts of reasonably well-off NOLA residents who were staying. As I told niemandsrose, I wasn't sure what percentage they formed of those left in the city, but it clearly seemed non-trivial, and it was at those people that I directed my remarks.

Also, it seems you may have interpreted my remarks more broadly than I intended. As I clarified in comments, I was questioning why more people hadn't left their homes, not necessarily why they hadn't left the city. I acknowledged that there were thousands who couldn't realistically have been expected to go elsewhere but who could've made it to a shelter, yet chose not to.

Of course, that was back when I thought the shelters were reasonably well-supplied and well-run instead of, well, however you describe what the hell they actually are. Many who did eventually leave their homes to go to them might've been better off staying put. It's pointless now to question whether the residents had reason to expect they would turn out to be so godawful or not. The vital issue is that the highest priority for the authorities should be their responsibility to succour those people and they are not coming close to meeting it.