Re: unused and abandoned school buses in New Orleans

"Mothra" <scarpj@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in news:1126187147.878601.60760
@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

> I have a friend from Nawlins who believes the reason most of the inner
> city poor refused to leave was because most of them had lived their
> entire lives in the city and never gone outside the city boundries.
> They weren't leaving period...even if Greyhound pulled up to their
> front door.

Could be true... hell a lot of people were on the news this morning
claiming they wouldn't leave *now*, and some of them aren't poor or
ignorant. One well-spoken woman on a bicycle was telling Soledad O'Brien
on CNN that her attorney advised that the mandatory evacuation order
issued yesterday is illegal.

I've been in a hurricane zone under evacuation advisories (I think that
was the technical term used... they weren't mandatory evacuation orders)
and the dilemma about whether or not to flee comes down to a few basic
situations:

1. Traffic: perhaps the most unsafe place you can be in a hurricane is
out on the road in a vehicle. As I recall, people were cautioned about
that extensively, and it was made abundantly clear that evacuating could
actually be more dangerous than staying inside a permanent structure (or
getting to a shelter). That's what's particularly bizarre about all the
yelping over parked school buses in New Orleans... even if there were
people to drive the buses and everyone got on them and all that went
fine, they could have led to the "highway of death" scenario people in
hurricane zones are always warned about.

2. Looting: if you leave your house and property you don't know how much
of it you'll find when you return. The general procedure is that
neighborhoods are sealed off by law enforcement. And even that leads to
suspicions: hell, I've known Floridians who swear that sheriff's deputies
break into houses during evacuations and help themselves to TVs and
stereos. Stories like that become urban legends, and discourage people
from leaving.

3. When you can return: one staple of post-hurricane coverage has always
been the spectacle of citizens wanting to return to evacuated areas and
not being allowed in. Last year in Florida there was a lot of videotape
of very volatile scenes when people wanted to go back and try to repair
their damaged houses before more rain came and local cops wouldn't let
them. I recall that last year CNN and other outlets even had footage of
cops in Florida using a taser gun on a homeowner who wanted to return...
it became a big deal for a day or two as the story about the guy who got
tasered in front of his toddlers.

Others who have had to deal with the "evacuate or not" dilemma probably
have other anecdotes, but that's what comes immediately to mind. It's
really not the simple decision that people are now -- for whatever
reasons -- making it out to be.

HP






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