Chalmette Massacre: The forsaken city
US Representative Charlie Melancon has announced that 100 people at the Chalmette Slip had died due to a lack of essentials sent to the embarkation site in St. Bernard Parish.
Coupled with the loss of thirty physically handicapped, elderly people at a St. Bernard nursing facility, this is by far the most troubling week of news ever for this Chalmette native.
People in the lower Ninth Ward and St. Bernard Parish are dead right now, murdered by politicians driven by self-interest in terms of protecting the financially generous shipping industry and a lack of utter concern for the well-being of a parish that apparently does not vote the right way.
St. Bernard Parish received no aid whatsoever from the state in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In fact, when boats were sent to the area to assist in the rescue, they were kept within New Orleans to work operations there. I can understand the logic of reserving the lion's share of rescue resources for New Orleans, but to totally cut off St. Bernard and Plaquemines, the latter being assisted by Iberia Parish more so than the state, is unconscienable.
St. Bernard was totally leveled by the storm; there is virtually no land visible from the air. Unlike parts of New Orleans, such as the French Quarter, downtown, and uptown areas that were spared, not a single acre of St. Bernard was above water, not counting the levees.
The fishing communities of Hopedale, Shell Beach, and Ysclosky are no more as the waters of Lake Borgne have overtaken everything outside the levee protection system.
Why was food and water not distributed in a safe area like the Chalmette Slip? All of those assembled at the St. Bernard Port were people removed from rooftops waiting to be transfered. These were not looters but scared, dehydrated, and hungry people.
You hear the media reporting the "killing fields" of a few homeless people outside of the Convention Center downtown, yet what of the mortuary we have on the side of the Mississippi River in St. Bernard?
St. Bernard Parish has yet to receive urgent medicines for diabetics and anbtibiotics. Why is the state dragging its feet? Why should there even be a rescue if the state is going to starve its people like a bunch of Nazis running a death camp.
And what of the cause of this? Hurricane Katrina cannot be totally blamed. The wind damage in St. Bernard was relatively light. The killer was the storm surge that came up the expressway for hurricanes known as the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, a mostly obselete shipping channel that is used mostly by politically favored companies. Less than 2 ships per day use the canal and it costs the US Army Corps of Engineers over 10 million a year to maintain this deadly shipping pathway.
The MRGO has been the source of salt-water intrusion that has eradicated St. Bernard's once lush swampland and destroyed trapping in the parish, once an industry so valuable that rival trapper groups literally fought a war over it. Not long ago I was at Shell Beach in eastern St. Bernard and saw porpoises playing...a lovely sight, yet also terrifying in that the presence of marine mamals that close to land indicates the salinity of the water.
While shipping a handful of shipping executives have profited immensely off this tax-payer boondoggle and enviromental disaster, the parish of St. Bernard has suffered, hearing perpetual excuses such as the necessity of widening locks and the need for additional studies by Congress. When it comes time to do a study, I'll fax over to the committee the pages of obituaries from this hurricane.
St. Bernard would have had little water had the MRGO not been there as conduit for a killer storm surge that contributed to the breaking of the levee that was the primary source of the waters that wiped out a nursing home in seconds, taking with it 30 fragile lives. It is a sad irony that the same thing that allows certain shipping magnates to live in a nice mansion is the very source that I, and 72,000 plus people now have nowhere to live.
When the mass funerals are said, I hope the Port of New Orleans, the staunch advocate of the MRGO, sends flowers and that Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin send donuts for the mourners to make up for their failure to get food, water, and help to the forsaken parishes of St. Bernard and Plaquemines.
Thanks to greed and the politics of self-interest, I am sure many people I called friend during my life and who were constituents when I served as their councilman are now dead.
BASTARDS!!!
Coupled with the loss of thirty physically handicapped, elderly people at a St. Bernard nursing facility, this is by far the most troubling week of news ever for this Chalmette native.
People in the lower Ninth Ward and St. Bernard Parish are dead right now, murdered by politicians driven by self-interest in terms of protecting the financially generous shipping industry and a lack of utter concern for the well-being of a parish that apparently does not vote the right way.
St. Bernard Parish received no aid whatsoever from the state in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In fact, when boats were sent to the area to assist in the rescue, they were kept within New Orleans to work operations there. I can understand the logic of reserving the lion's share of rescue resources for New Orleans, but to totally cut off St. Bernard and Plaquemines, the latter being assisted by Iberia Parish more so than the state, is unconscienable.
St. Bernard was totally leveled by the storm; there is virtually no land visible from the air. Unlike parts of New Orleans, such as the French Quarter, downtown, and uptown areas that were spared, not a single acre of St. Bernard was above water, not counting the levees.
The fishing communities of Hopedale, Shell Beach, and Ysclosky are no more as the waters of Lake Borgne have overtaken everything outside the levee protection system.
Why was food and water not distributed in a safe area like the Chalmette Slip? All of those assembled at the St. Bernard Port were people removed from rooftops waiting to be transfered. These were not looters but scared, dehydrated, and hungry people.
You hear the media reporting the "killing fields" of a few homeless people outside of the Convention Center downtown, yet what of the mortuary we have on the side of the Mississippi River in St. Bernard?
St. Bernard Parish has yet to receive urgent medicines for diabetics and anbtibiotics. Why is the state dragging its feet? Why should there even be a rescue if the state is going to starve its people like a bunch of Nazis running a death camp.
And what of the cause of this? Hurricane Katrina cannot be totally blamed. The wind damage in St. Bernard was relatively light. The killer was the storm surge that came up the expressway for hurricanes known as the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, a mostly obselete shipping channel that is used mostly by politically favored companies. Less than 2 ships per day use the canal and it costs the US Army Corps of Engineers over 10 million a year to maintain this deadly shipping pathway.
The MRGO has been the source of salt-water intrusion that has eradicated St. Bernard's once lush swampland and destroyed trapping in the parish, once an industry so valuable that rival trapper groups literally fought a war over it. Not long ago I was at Shell Beach in eastern St. Bernard and saw porpoises playing...a lovely sight, yet also terrifying in that the presence of marine mamals that close to land indicates the salinity of the water.
While shipping a handful of shipping executives have profited immensely off this tax-payer boondoggle and enviromental disaster, the parish of St. Bernard has suffered, hearing perpetual excuses such as the necessity of widening locks and the need for additional studies by Congress. When it comes time to do a study, I'll fax over to the committee the pages of obituaries from this hurricane.
St. Bernard would have had little water had the MRGO not been there as conduit for a killer storm surge that contributed to the breaking of the levee that was the primary source of the waters that wiped out a nursing home in seconds, taking with it 30 fragile lives. It is a sad irony that the same thing that allows certain shipping magnates to live in a nice mansion is the very source that I, and 72,000 plus people now have nowhere to live.
When the mass funerals are said, I hope the Port of New Orleans, the staunch advocate of the MRGO, sends flowers and that Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin send donuts for the mourners to make up for their failure to get food, water, and help to the forsaken parishes of St. Bernard and Plaquemines.
Thanks to greed and the politics of self-interest, I am sure many people I called friend during my life and who were constituents when I served as their councilman are now dead.
BASTARDS!!!
posted by BourbonConservative at 10:36 PM
3 Comments:
Fair enough to criticize the mayor and the governor. However, I would ask the following:
It's been four years since 9/11. FOUR YEARS. We have spent BILLIONS of dollars on Homeland Security training, and supposedly preparing for a major incident (and this might as well have been a terrorist attack for its effects), and it is now SIX DAYS (and they had several more days of warning before that, that this was at least a possibility.)
Where are the feds? Oh, yeah. President Bush flew over it in a helicopter. He didn't offer to send the 3000 LA national guard members in Iraq back home to help (so the governor is operating with crippled resources) OR to send an extra 3000 troops to replace them. And if you want to go on about causes, don't forget the continual budget cuts that the Bush administration has been feeding the Corps of Engineers (especially for flood control projects).
And heck, FEMA did a study in 1995 predicting this. And yes, that covers both the Clinton and the Bush administrations. Considering that it has now been almost a week, and nearly two weeks since the first hint that it might be the time, I will cringe if I hear President Bush tomorrow say he is 'sending' or that help 'is on its way.'
Now, you have a case to blame who you blame. But there is plenty of blame to go around.
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