July 2005 article reveals NOLA told poor: 'You're on your own'-Rawstory

[demo dutch]

July 2005 article reveals New Orleans told poor: 'You're on your own'
John Byrne

A July 24, 2005 article in the New Orleans Times Picayune (not available online) reveals just how unprepared officials were for a hurricane, especially as it affected the city's poor, RAW STORY has learned. The first sentence alone reveals how little support the city expected to have for the poor in the event of a disaster, saying, "City, state and federal emergency officials are preparing to give the poorest of New Orleans' poor a historically blunt message: In the event of a major hurricane, you're on your own."

The article was first discovered in a detailed piece by the Philadelphia Daily News' Will Bunch.

The local Red Cross executive director was quoted as saying, "You're responsible for your safety, and you should be responsible for the person next to you. If you have some room to get that person out of town, the Red Cross will have a space for that person outside the area. We can help you. But we don't have the transportation."

#
In scripted appearances being recorded now, officials such as Mayor Ray Nagin, local Red Cross Executive Director Kay Wilkins and City Council President Oliver Thomas drive home the word that the city does not have the resources to move out of harm's way an estimated 134,000 people without transportation...

Officials are recording the evacuation message even as recent research by the University of New Orleans indicated that as many as 60 percent of the residents of most southeast Louisiana parishes would remain in their homes in the event of a Category 3 hurricane.

Their message will be distributed on hundreds of DVDs across the city. The DVDs' basic get-out-of-town message applies to all audiences, but the it is especially targeted to scores of churches and other groups heavily concentrated in Central City and other vulnerable, low-income neighborhoods, said the Rev. Marshall Truehill, head of Total Community Action.

"The primary message is that each person is primarily responsible for themselves, for their own family and friends," Truehill said.

Production likely will continue through August. Officials want to get the DVDs into the hands of pastors and community leaders as hurricane season reaches its height in September, Katz said.

In an interview at the opening of this year's hurricane season, New Orleans Emergency Preparedness Director Joseph Matthews acknowledged that the city is overmatched.

"It's important to emphasize that we just don't have the resources to take everybody out," he said in a interview in late May.

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/July_2005_article_reveals_Red_Cross_told_poor_Youre_on_your_o_0902.html

[Robbie Michaels]

1. A Little Too Late

For those DVD's, isn't it? Just like everything else in this rescue operation. Too Little, Too Late.

[Zynx]

2. Unbelievable. Those DVD's will be a chilling historical artifact.

[demo dutch]

3. DVD's was the city's response to FEMA cutting the planning for evacuate

the poor.
Quote
Last year, FEMA spent $250,000 to conduct an eight-day hurricane drill for a mock killer storm hitting New Orleans. Some 250 emergency officials attended. Many scenarios now playing out, including a helicopter evacuation of the Superdome, were discussed in that drill for a fictional storm named Pam.

This year, the group was to design a plan to fix such unresolved problems as evacuating sick and injured people from the Superdome and housing tens of thousands of stranded citizens. But funding for that planning was cut, said Tolbert, who also was disaster chief for North Carolina.
--
With a problem on the scale that a federal role was clearly needed, why did FEMA suddenly punt? Yet the most disgusting part of all of this is now that the poor have once again been failed by their government leaders, local and federal, we saw tonight that the head of FEMA is now blaming the victims:

"I think the death toll may go into the thousands and, unfortunately, that's going to be attributable a lot to people who did not heed the advance warnings," Michael Brown told CNN.

He turned out to be right about the deathtoll!