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i cant help but wonder about these people. the entire hurricane lasted about 3 hours. the flooding hasnt ended yet. but these people have no idea that their entire life will grind to a halt for the next several years. from what ive been watching on foxnews and cnn; these people seem to think a snap of the fingers is going to end this, and they can walk right back to what they had. in reality, they might never get back what they had. its not a sense of just loosing a home. these people are now unemployed. with dependents. there is no housing. not temporary, not permanent. there isnt supplies to build any either. there isnt even land to put it all back on to. everything now is still underwater. it cant just get put back the way it was.

as a sociologist, i guess what disturbs me the most are the images i see of looting, gangs, and group mentality exhibiting dangerious tendancies. there is no food. no water. no medicine. the dead are lying around them. there is no hope. and there is lawlessness. its a bad situation that could go off like a bomb. people are openly calling for the military to interviene on the ground. the attorney general is on tv making statements about how this will not happen. its a strange predicament. never thought id hear the words, "please bring in the army to march in my town"

what clearly is to blame is the ill prepared state of response. the federal emergency management organization has been throwing money arond since 9/11 for states and cities to produce working large scale disaster prep and plans. it looks like nothing was planned here. for a week they knew they were getting a hurricane. for 3 days they exact knowledge it was going to be a category 3 or more, and coming straight at them. and look what happens. there is no order. no plan. texas has more planning, in 24 hours, to deal with the problem, than either states of MS or LA. preparedness should have said;

forced evacuation of all population, block by block, with in 40 miles of the city. staging of emergency personel 150 miles out, days in advance. staging of transported goods and resources, including food water and clothing, 150 miles out in the advance days. in the final day or so, the army corps of engineers and city works should have been fortifying the fuck out of that burm around the town. 40 foot might have made a difference. much more so than 14. and if that meant bulldozing buildings for materials, so be it. then wait out that storm. come back in after 4 hours, and expect lawlessness, and death. restore order. restore health conditions. then restore the people to the area. simple. simple enough to have saved lives.

how would i handle it? being someone in that hurricane with my house coming down around me? i wouldnt roam the streets and start looting. pragmatically speaking. job 1, has to be creating shelter. people are walking around, crying, looting. but still have no place to go. the first thing id do, is build something. anything. get the sun and rain off myself. get some kind of temporary shelter up. id still have to survive. that means sanitizing whats around me. drag out the dead, and start burning the bodies. purifying water. then setting up to connect to the outside world. clear out a football sized area for every 300 people, to accomodate air drops. the name of the game is order. its having a plan. its knowing how to survive. right now, these people are living on borrowed time. 7-11's are going to run out of grape soda to steal, and four days later they have no temporary shelters, no signals out to where they are. and no sense of what to do. just thousands of throngs of people, rampaging like animals on a sinking ship.

its a tragedy. it could have been avoided. but it wasnt. instead, we have a refugee situation very similar to Bosnia, or Congo, or Cambodia. there is no hospitable place for these people to go. they have nothing. yet, only in america do we seem to demand help in 30 minutes; when it took months before the same level of assistance could begin in foreign countries for similar predicaments. and yet, most shocking. for all the money we raised for a tsunami. for all the aid we air lifted to eurpoe. for all the villages we created in africa. there isnt one country showing up to help america. who is there to help when the World's Helper, needs a hand?