Got this from a former co-worker.

[Area 51]

Over the holiday weekend, I collected enough relief items from friends, neighbors and co-workers to make a run to the impacted area. A friend loaned a large horse trailer (we filled it completely with donations, several times) and an external 150 gal fuel tank. I was unable to find gas west of Mobile so the additional fuel tank saved my butt. Got as far west as Slidell and met up with FEMA/Red Cross reps. Arriving about 0230, I was directed to a local school where folks were sleeping on blankets in the parking lot. There are churches and schools being used but folks are mostly outside as the air inside isn't tolerable; no power.

Having heard of violence and some ambushes for relief items, I took weapons. Now among local Sheriff Deputies, cops and National Guard (they had just arrived from Alabama), I thought best to unload an d store the weapons. I was surprised when the sheriff's deputies suggested I keep the ammo chambered. So there I was, side by side with locally armed officials unloading the goods with loaded weapons by my side. The type of weapons I had would have normally raised concerns.... none expressed. Strangest feeling...here in America. Areas there really are/were like a 3rd world country. To tell you the truth, I never expected to have to retrieve these from the gun locker; I thought these weapons would collect dust for years to come. In the end, I had no reason for training them in self defense but the potential was there... for a short time... as desperation and general disregard for the rule of law existed.

The local law enforcement folks were exhausted and emotions went unchecked. Pray for these folks...they need support, help, time away...R&R. Impacted just as the local residences are, they continue to do their job.

Red Cross volunteers came from all over...I met some from California. They lived daily under the same conditions. Much praise for all the orgs...Red Cross, FEMA, Salvation Army. I have a feeling they are not receiving the credit/support they most certainly deserve.

While there, a gentleman arrived with two tour buses; offered apartments (he had 85 available) and promised employment to whomever boarded. Destination Indiana. With no or little hope, people boarded not knowing what was ahead for them. There were too many reasons for me to lose composure. It made for a very long ride back to Atlanta.

I was able to travel west on I-10 not not east. Was routed through Pascagoula. Devastation everywhere. Hundreds if not not thousands of cars on the side of the road abandoned....no fuel. There were boats I have to navigate around. One guy was siphoning his tank and selling it for $10.00 a gal....he didn't have enough to get out of town so the car had no value.

Too many stories. Grief, pain, sorrow, hope and lost hope. Not sure what is being reported but I can see all around me people coming to help, tears in their eyes. No apathy around here!

The gratitude of the affected people is overwhelming. If one emotion doesn't get you, there are 10 others that will.

My community, a small metro Atlanta county, has now processed 10,000 refugees (I'm told). Local churches have organized and are making 28,000 meals a day. The relief effort became too big for my county to sustain and the operation was moved to a convention center near Atlanta Hartsfield airport. I'm very proud of what the communities are doing. One neighbor now has 17 people living in his house.

During the early days of the crisis, too many impacted areas were not receiving help; it was impossible for any supporting entity to be everywhere. Once in Slidell, the Red Cross asked me to go next to Petal Ms. Made several runs to various places as neighbors continued to support. In the past 5 days, the local churches have amassed several 53 ' trailer loads and are now making regular runs west...no need for me to make any more horse trailer runs but, there continues to be a huge need for local volunteers to help with refugees. Plenty to do !!!!

My sister and her husband lived downtown New Orleans (three blocks from Bourbon) where he is an architect for Tulane U. It appears they lost everything. They are now here and he is employed in Atlanta until Tulane makes a decision. He is one of the lucky ones. I am not sure all the influx of refugees is sustainable, economically. Can't imagine there are jobs here for all. Not sure how long it'll take for Tulane or any other institution to recover....some may never.

Pray for and support these folks....the challenge has just begun.

[bkkcoh]

thank them for assisting directly when so many of us can't or aren't really able to :toast: :clap:

[JOhn]

thank them for assisting directly when so many of us can't or aren't really able to :toast: :clap:
I agree with bbkoch, thanks for doing what most of us can't. :thumb:

I was surprised when the sheriff's deputies suggested I keep the ammo chambered. So there I was, side by side with locally armed officials unloading the goods with loaded weapons by my side. The type of weapons I had would have normally raised concerns.... none expressed. Strangest feeling...here in America. Areas there really are/were like a 3rd world country.

It's so sad that in times like this, you and other like yourself have to arm themselves and have that additional worry. These things bring out the extraordinary hero's among us, but unfortunately also bring out some of the worst behavior in otherwise law abiding people

[Area 51]

I agree with bbkoch, thanks for doing what most of us can't. :thumb:



It's so sad that in times like this, you and other like yourself have to arm themselves and have that additional worry. These things bring out the extraordinary hero's among us, but unfortunately also bring out some of the worst behavior in otherwise law abiding people

You have made an error in reading.

I will not arm myself when participating in efforts such as these. I would only arm myself to protect my family and or defend my country.

This story came to me from a former co-worker that is involved with the relief efforts.

[Eleazar]

WTF is sad about arming yourself when people are shoting AK-47s at cops and firing at rescue helicopters?

[bkkcoh]

You have made an error in reading.

I will not arm myself when participating in efforts such as these. I would only arm myself to protect my family and or defend my country.

This story came to me from a former co-worker that is involved with the relief efforts.


I did mis-read that initially, that is why i said to thank them for doing it..... :banghead: :hmmm:

[Dave Lane]

Congrats the world needs more people like you (hopefully sans the weapons normally!)

Dave

[Area 51]

Congrats the world needs more people like you (hopefully sans the weapons normally!)

Dave

Again, that wasn't me.

[HemiEd]

WTF is sad about arming yourself when people are shoting AK-47s at cops and firing at rescue helicopters?


This explained the best I have found so far.

An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State
by Robert Tracinski

It has taken four long days for state and federal officials to figure out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can't blame them, because it has also taken me four long days to figure out what is going on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if you think that we are confronting a natural disaster.

If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild.

Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists--myself included--did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting.

But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.

The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong.

The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over the past four days. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view.

The man-made disaster is the welfare state.

For the past few days, I have found the news from New Orleans to be confusing. People were not behaving as you would expect them to behave in an emergency--indeed, they were not behaving as they have behaved in other emergencies. That is what has shocked so many people: they have been saying that this is not what we expect from America. In fact, it is not even what we expect from a Third World country.

When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion. They work together to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously organize to keep order and solve problems. This is especially true in America. We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own initiative rather than waiting around for the government to take care of us. I have seen this a hundred times, in small examples (a small town whose main traffic light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to get out of their cars and serve as impromptu traffic cops, directing cars through the intersection) and large ones (the spontaneous response of New Yorkers to September 11).

So what explains the chaos in New Orleans?

To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a description from a Washington Times story:

"Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists, knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and police and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on.

"The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen poured in to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire....

"Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened Arkansas National Guard members were inside New Orleans with shoot-to-kill orders.

" 'These troops are...under my orders to restore order in the streets,' she said. 'They have M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will.' "

The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article shows National Guard troops, with rifles and armored vests, riding on an armored vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a rabble of squalid, listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling at them. It looks exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad.

What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for an orgy of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to storm the very buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the drivers to drive away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Super Dome?

Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing further destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying to help them?

My wife, Sherri, figured it out first, and she figured it out on a sense-of-life level. While watching the coverage last night on Fox News Channel, she told me that she was getting a familiar feeling. She studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Chicago, which is located in the South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in America. "The projects," as they were known, were infamous for uncontrollable crime and irremediable squalor. (They have since, mercifully, been demolished.)

What Sherri was getting from last night's television coverage was a whiff of the sense of life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"--the informational phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news channels--gave some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane, and of the 300,000 or so who remained, a large number were from the city's public housing projects. Jack Wakeland then gave me an additional, crucial fact: early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the city's jails--so they just let many of them loose. There is no doubt a significant overlap between these two populations--that is, a large number of people in the jails used to live in the housing projects, and vice versa.

There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hit--but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups: criminals--and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep--on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves.

All of this is related, incidentally, to the apparent incompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. But in a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political supporters--not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency.

No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In fact, some are already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for example, for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans had drafted an adequate evacuation plan. The worst example is an execrable piece from the Toronto Globe and Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos on American "individualism." But the truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos was caused by a system that was the exact opposite of individualism.

What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the government hasn't taken care of them. They don't use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.

But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them.

The welfare state--and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and encourages--is the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is reporting.

Source: TIA Daily -- September 2, 2005

[Rain Man]

Again, that wasn't me.


You're so humble. You deserve a medal for this.