NationStates Jolt Archive

A lot of people seem to be imparting blame to the residents of New Orleans who stayed behind. So for those of you who are, please picture the following scenario:



A Category 5 Storm is headed for New Orleans. You live in the slums of the French Quarter. You just heard on the radio that everyone has been told to evacuate. The problem is, you don't have a car and don't have enough money to get a ride out. Taxi and bus drivers are gouging city residents with $500 evacuation fees, and since you barely get by day-to-day on your wages, you don't have that kind of money. You cannot reach out-of-state loved ones to ask for them to pick you up because the phones are down. Not that it would matter; the State is not letting anyone into the city at this point. So your choices are as follows:



A) Take off on foot. Travelling due west at a superhuman pace of 5 mph over the next 24 hours you might just make it 120 miles to the edge of the storm. Then again you might not, being caught in 150 mph winds with 200 mph gusts. For anyone who has not personally witnessed these wind speeds, please take it from a hurricane survivor that they are not pleasant. They uproot trees snapping them like matchsticks, and pick up objects around the size of a human tossing them hundreds of feet through the air. You do not want to be caught in them while walking along an open highway.


B) Head to the Superdome or Convention Center, which are both being set up as emergency shelters. Unfortunately for you, they are also both about to become part of the disaster zone. They will be cut off from the rest of the world for a week. Their inhabitants will die by the hundreds from disease and malnutrition, leaving piles of corpses to fester in the open sun. You might survive if you fight for every scrap. Then again you might not.


C) Stay at home and try to weather the storm. Pray to God that the flimsy levees will not break, instantaneously flooding your neighborhood with 27 feet of water. And hope that, should they break, you live in a 2-story house, can get your family to the rooftop in thirty seconds, and have a week's worth of drinking water you can quickly bring with you. The average human dies after three days without water. In the New Orleans summer heat it's more like two days.


D) Head for the city's high ground and find shelter. Hopefully you will find it in time to weather the coming storm. And hopefully you will not be raped/mugged/killed by roaming street gangs in what will soon become complete and total anarchy. You must eventually wade through the urban hell out there to find the food and water necessary for survival.


E) Join one of the street gangs! Forget about all the moral codes you have ever lived by and start making friends who know how to survive rough times. Desperate circumstances do call for desperate measures, and you can always later claim that you had no choice. But even if you can live with yourself you might not be doing so for long. Gang warfare will break out over possession of looted goods and occupation of the precious dry ground that's left. Then the National Guard will drop by and it's game over.




If none of the previous options seems like a recipe for surviving Katrina, please consider the possibility that the New Orleans poor had no good options available to them, resulting in the casualties we are now seeing.

Poll Added!

Well, if they went in the right direction they might have been able to get out of the worst of it and into the tropical storm areas...

Other: get it over with and kill myself quickly and on MY terms, take THAT Death

I'd try to leave town by foot, hoping to find someone nice enough to provide me with a ride to the nearest safe city.

As I wouldn't know yet about the conditions in the Superdome, I guess I would most likely try my luck there... in hindsight, it would turn out to be a stupid decision, but in the situation, I guess that's what my reaction would be.

if you can leave town by foot you can always stop and find a place to stay when you get as far away as you are capable of.

If you leave by foot - hitchhike!

Stay in my home, box up all canned goods and take em up stairs, I would most likly be in an apartment so I would go upstairs to a neighbor with canned goods, batteries blankets and any other item I would use to survive, I would then fill up the bathtub, sink and any and all pots and pans with water. I would also make sure other neighbors did this. after the storm, food would be rationed, fires carefully built using wood from furniture and other peices would be fished out and dried.

soups and stews would be the order for they will help stretch the food out. foragers would scavenge for more food (canned if possible), perishables would be cooked first and Jerkied if possible, and all would share.

One fire and large pot would be set aside to boil water to make it potable this would keep the water supply going. I would endevor to pull the comunnity together to keep the scavenging for food going. pulling people together if need be. I would set up bait lines and fish (depending on where I am) that would also help supply food.

One thing I would not do is sit on my @$$ and moan "why isn't anyone helping me."

Stay in my home, box up all canned goods and take em up stairs, I would most likly be in an apartment so I would go upstairs to a neighbor with canned goods, batteries blankets and any other item I would use to survive, I would then fill up the bathtub, sink and any and all pots and pans with water. I would also make sure other neighbors did this. after the storm, food would be rationed, fires carefully built using wood from furniture and other peices would be fished out and dried.

soups and stews would be the order for they will help stretch the food out. foragers would scavenge for more food (canned if possible), perishables would be cooked first and Jerkied if possible, and all would share.

One fire and large pot would be set aside to boil water to make it potable this would keep the water supply going. I would endevor to pull the comunnity together to keep the scavenging for food going. pulling people together if need be. I would set up bait lines and fish (depending on where I am) that would also help supply food.

One thing I would not do is sit on my @$$ and moan "why isn't anyone helping me."

I like the way you think. I would do similar. I also have enough weapons to provide for neighborhood defense.

First provide for sustenance and organize defense, then extend the system to cover a larger area while seeking help.

I like the way you think. I would do similar. I also have enough weapons to provide for neighborhood defense.

First provide for sustenance and organize defense, then extend the system to cover a larger area while seeking help.*Nods in agreement* That's what happened when Kauai was hit Twice by two big hurricanes. the community pulled together and worked together. all perishables were gathered in one spot, people pulled out grills and made campfires and had a barbeque large enough to keep people going and keep the workers feed until help from outside islands arrived, and that was also before FEMA and the Feds came to help also.

Andrew hit Florida and it was a completely different story.

At least the emergency shelters would've been better than the streets, especially the Superdome. Conditions were bad, but they lived. That's better than many people.
And btw, not all of those trapped were poor. Some were tourists who missed the last flights out, and could not find a rental car. Some were just people who thought Betsy was the worst ever, and Katrina couldn't hurt them. And a few (like my crazy uncle) probably stayed for the adventure. Yes, my uncle had to go to Pensocola at the time, and delibrately stayed there to watch the storm. They obviously weren't hit bad, but there was some high storm surge.

If none of the previous options seems like a recipe for surviving Katrina, please consider the possibility that the New Orleans poor had no good options available to them, resulting in the casualties we are now seeing.

If the above options seem like idiotic examples, congratulations. You have a brain.

Lets set aside the fact that even those below the poverty line are likely to own cars. Les set aside the fact that bumming a ride is possible. Lets set aside the fact that living out of your car is easy. Lets set aside the fact that we weren't smart enough to leave town a week or so before it hit. lets set all that aside...

and ride a bike.

Knowing what I know now, the Superdome seems like the best choice by far.

Blame Bush!

I would set up my own militia of neighbours and (if we survive the storm) go around as the self proclaimed police force saving hot chicks etc then we would collect all the supplies in the city and distribute them evenly among various groups who would form in the areas

Mind you if I was poor I wouldn’t have any weapons so I would probly volunteer at the local police station or something

the one thing the government should of done is evacuate all the civilians before hand to save as much life as possible

I would set up my own militia of neighbours and (if we survive the storm) go around as the self proclaimed police force saving hot chicks etc then we would collect all the supplies in the city and distribute them evenly among various groups who would form in the areas

Mind you if I was poor I wouldn’t have any weapons so I would probly volunteer at the local police station or something

the one thing the government should of done is evacuate all the civilians before hand to save as much life as possible

Well we told them to. And generally speaking when we tell them to evacuate we tell them to call the cops/fire/emergency services for help.

These are all people who didn't heed the evacuation warning.

Well we told them to. And generally speaking when we tell them to evacuate we tell them to call the cops/fire/emergency services for help.

These are all people who didn't heed the evacuation warning.
Mandatory evacuations are a joke. For one thing, there's a massive "cry wolf" syndrome which doesn't help things, and for another, there is literally no attempt made to help them leave.

Well we told them to. And generally speaking when we tell them to evacuate we tell them to call the cops/fire/emergency services for help.

These are all people who didn't heed the evacuation warning.

well if they didn't listen to there instructions hard cheese :mad:

Mandatory evacuations are a joke. For one thing, there's a massive "cry wolf" syndrome which doesn't help things, and for another, there is literally no attempt made to help them leave.

Yeah, America has this nasty habit of letting people do things that are bad for them.

If the above options seem like idiotic examples, congratulations. You have a brain.

Lets set aside the fact that even those below the poverty line are likely to own cars. Les set aside the fact that bumming a ride is possible. Lets set aside the fact that living out of your car is easy. Lets set aside the fact that we weren't smart enough to leave town a week or so before it hit. lets set all that aside...

and ride a bike.

So you think the 100,000 people without cars could have all bummed rides. Brilliant. And a week before it hit the storm hadn't even materialized off of Africa. So you think the poor should have used their prophetic ESP to predict that Katrina was coming? Sorry I forgot to include that option. :rolleyes:

Walk, chances are you will be able to hitch a ride/find some sort of shealter and if not, if you head in the right direction you won't be hit by the worst of the storm.

Walk, chances are you will be able to hitch a ride/find some sort of shealter and if not, if you head in the right direction you won't be hit by the worst of the storm.

The chances of either of those things happening are actually very poor, and even if you're not hit by the worst of a Category 5 hurricane, you're still going to die when you get caught out in the open.

Hmm, I think most of those who stayed chose to because they just didn't want to go as evident by the LARGE number of cars left in the city.

Hmm, I think most of those who stayed chose to because they just didn't want to go as evident by the LARGE number of cars left in the city.

Or possibly, this is at least partially a result of some families with two or three cars taking only one and leaving the others behind. Many more of the cars currently floating around the city may be from abandoned car dealerships. You can't assume a one-to-one correlation of cars left in the city to car owners sticking around for no good reason.

Yeah, America has this nasty habit of letting people do things that are bad for them.

Yup, like smoking and alcohol....


But it's not the government's place to decide that.

Walk, chances are you will be able to hitch a ride/find some sort of shealter and if not, if you head in the right direction you won't be hit by the worst of the storm.
And how is everyone supposed to know which way is the right way?

Without hindsight, I'd either try and ride the storm out in my house or I'd head for the Superdome.

You live in the slums of the French Quarter.
There are no slums in the French quarter

Or possibly, this is at least partially a result of some families with two or three cars taking only one and leaving the others behind. Many more of the cars currently floating around the city may be from abandoned car dealerships. You can't assume a one-to-one correlation of cars left in the city to car owners sticking around for no good reason.

That's probably what i'd do if i was in that situation, "borrow" an abandoned car, or ( in the case of someonw who dosent know how to hotwire a car...) a bike

I voted "head to an emergency shelter" because that's what I would have done. With regards to how the situation developed, I'd choose "leave on foot". But I wouldn't have known that before hand.