Overheard comments from co-workers about Katrina....

[HardWorkingDem]

Well, to prove we are such a compassionate country, some of my good ole co-workers were over heard saying things like, "well, what did people expect for not evacuating" or "they should have gotten out sooner; they own tvs and new it was coming."

Um...maybe they didn't have a car or means to get the hell out?!?!

[phantom power]

1. If I understand correctly, 80% of the residents did evacuate.

The other 20% were too poor. No car, no bus fare, etc.

[KittyWampus]

11. Wrong. Many Thought They'd Just Ride It Out. While Some Might Not

have had means to leave or been too incapacitated... many referenced Camille.

And then, there's the simple truth that able bodied people could have WALKED.

Think of all the scenes in history of refugees WALKING.

Or even, get to a highway and stick your damn thumb out.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

13. Walked where? How far could they have gotten? And as far as....

..."get to a highway and stick your damn thumb out", when was the last time YOU tried to hitch a ride?

"Many Thought They'd Just Ride It Out"??? Yeah, right.

[PunkPop]

21. What a load of crap.

Have you been holier-than-thou your whole life or is this a new phenomenon?

[Joe the Revelator]

23. You think they had time to WALK out of the way of the storm?

How far can you get in 24 hours on foot?

Not too mention, it was probably safer to ride out the storm in a house instead of not knowing if you'd find shelter elsewhere.

[Spike from MN]

14. Some tried to get out but the traffic wasn't moving.

I saw an interview with one of the guys lined up to get into the dome. He had loaded up the car and tried to get out but the freeway was so packed that he wasn't getting anywhere so he ended up going to the dome instead. I had heard that prior to the storm hitting, they didn't change the directions on the freeways so that all roads headed out. Not sure if that's true or not but if it is, why the heck didn't they do that? Seems to me that's pretty much SOP for something like this.

[Joe the Revelator]

24. They did in fact reverse the highways..

I saw pictures of it. I see if i can't find one again.

[Spike from MN]

26. That's good to know.

The only pics I saw had outbound traffic jammed bumper-to-bumper and not moving but the inbound lanes were empty except for a car or two. Good to know they eventually reversed the inbound lanes so all traffic was outbound. Thanks for correcting me. No picture is necessary. I'll take your word for it. ;)

[sniffa]

2. they stayed behind so they couLd Loot

[Telly Savalas]

16. .

:rofl:

[SteppingRazor]

3. And besides, it's your HOME...

I live in southeast Florida (Katrina, in fact, knocked my power out for a couple of days), but it would take a Category-5, Fist-of-God-type hurricane to get me to leave -- this is my home, fer chrissake.

[tk2kewl]

4. did i hear right that they weren't letting people into the Super Dome if

they didn't have their own food and water to last 2 days?

[Hong Kong Cavalier]

5. I heard that too, where I work.

I was so mad at them (one of them was a self-proclaimed liberal) that I jammed my headphones on and tried to drown them out.

[DURHAM D]

6. I heard on the tv on Sunday that only 1 in 5 residents of NO

have access to private transportation.

[wryter2000]

7. I'm on a writers' loop of mixed politics

One of the rwrs said, "Why didn't they get out?" and a moderate blasted her (nicely) for it. I kept my mouth shut.

My moderate officemate on the looting -- "They're hungry and need dry clothes."

Thank heaven the entire population isn't rw asshats.

[subchicagogal]

8. I hope you enlightened the sheeple!

It's just like a conversation I was having with my repuke coworker about the people in the Superdome and she triumphantly stated "well, if I were them, I would just whip out my credit card and go to a hotel when I got to Houston". I gently informed her that the reason they are in the Superdome in the first place is because they didn't have the means to leave the city, and that I highly doubted they had credit cards to use. She then switched topics to the looters....:banghead:

[wryter2000]

10. Let them eat cake

:mad:

[Bethany Rockafella]

9. I've been hearing conversations here at work too.

Apparnetly one was disagreeing with another. One female was upset at the looters and the other was stating that they are doing it to survive. You know there are a lot of people in the US feel the looters shouldn't be doing stuff like that. But they don't know how they would react in a situation like that. They just don't know.

[Cleita]

12. I hope you pointed those things out to them.

Jerks.

[Ravenseye]

15. The Homeless had no idea

One reporter said that a homeless guy came up to him the day before the hurricane asking what was going on. Not everyone has televisions. As far as escaping not everyone has cars either.

[Mutley]

17. A kid in one of my classes said

he couldn't believe that these people couldn't manage to scrape $6 together to get on the greyhound. I told him about the day I couldn't scrape together $1.05 for something from the McDonald's dollar menu.

[Double T]

18. There will always be several 'hind sight sages' telling everyone.....

what they should have done, after the fact

[kbm8795]

19. IMO, the buses should have been free. . .

the city buses also used to ferry people out of the city as far as possible in a continuous movement, and the northbound City of New Orleans train should have been filled on Sunday.

[Sequoia]

20. It seemed like it was over until the levees broke

Then it became a living hell.

[Igel]

22. Not everything is black and white.

Did you notice the shear number of cars and pickups that were trashed? We're not talking just in dealership lots, either.

Many people didn't leave because they lacked transportation. Even some that lacked personal transportation could leave, and did.

Many people didn't leave because they simply didn't think it would be that bad, or they wanted to stay for some other reason.


There's no shortage of either kind of person, and I'm not going to engage in faith-based appraisals of the relative proportion of each.

[theHandpuppet]

25. No doubt some compassionate fundies, too

Steer them to articles such as this one: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9142413 /

May God forgive them for their heartlessness.