Le Sequoit

The Vacation is Over

As I watch coverage of Katrina, the scenarios become more and more dire. This is what folks are saying:

• Up to 50,000 dead. (perhaps eventually)
• Most of the city of New Orleans inhabitable for perhaps months, as this saucer of a city fills with petro-chemical waste and sewage along with the 25' of flood water.
• Up to a million homeless, five times that following Andrew.
• Massive power outages over Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama of unknown duration.
• Production responsible for 20 to 25 per cent of our oil consumption dead in the water―long term disruption of production, refining and distribution.
• The Mississippi River closed to traffic.

But look at the waves and check out the wind bands.

And at the Superdome, a place that fills for a football game in two hours, poor black people who own no cars and have nowhere to go wait with their elderly relatives in the 40 MPH winds and increasing rain bands to be thoroughly screened before entering.

Because there are not enough National Guard left to do even this.

No one yet has pointed that out but, unless there is a miracle of miracles, this shortage is going to become very apparent as Katrina, shaping up to be the worst disaster of our history, continues her way.

It's not called the National Guard for nothing.

posted by sequoit @ 6:33 PM