Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2005 11:46
PM
Subject: Civilization's thin vaneer
Watching the unrestrained looting via TV in New Orleans can give one an
insight why the people need the right to keep and bare arms. In
times of great calamities, people show their base instincts were it good
or evil.
The police cannot cope with mass looting of this scope, just
stand by and watch. the animals run wild. After the billions spent on
FEMA, on the US Army Corps of Engineers, for flood and levee projects, for
disaster planning, the city ceased to function and is underwater for several
weeks. No water , no power, no hospitals, no services.
As usual, the churches step in to help immediately while Bush
decides to ends his vacation.. well .. errr.. maybe just one more day and
fly back to Washington to take charge. Meanwhile every church has a fellowship
hall, food , kitchen, restroom, ready at a moments notice and functioning to
serve.
Richard
This is one natural disaster that our government knew was going to happen
sooner or later (like a big earthquake in California). The fact that
there are so many problems afterwards, such as looting and even flooding, can
partly be blamed on bad planning. This is another reason why the U.S.
shouldn't be spending so much money on other countries. If we had spent
the last few decades strengthening the levees and putting in modern pumping
equipment with backup power, perhaps much of this disaster could have been
avoided. How rational is it to rely on pumps that rely on grid power to
operate in hurricane conditions? Of course, the power is going to go out
in a hurricane and of course the pumps will stop working. Poor
planning. They also could have inspected the levees with modern
equipment over the years and reinforced weak points that gave away
yesterday or redesigned them to be stronger, even rebuild them altogether and
perhaps build tunnels to carry the water away from the city. I know
it would have been billions to do, but so what? We just spent $300
Billion + prosecuting a war overseas, we can't spend that sort of money
here to make a better country?!? This chaos in New Orleans is partly a
testament to our poor planning as a society for an inevitable natural
disaster.
