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for politicians.
I just got back from Gulfport and NOLA, and toured the damage. The media has not done a good job of describing it. It is beyond anything you can imagine without having seen it. The footage from Sarajevo was no worse. I drove through the Ninth Ward and Lower Ninth just as it was getting dark, Tuesday night. It's unreal. New Orleans was a city/parrish of 400K people (over a million in the whole metroplex area), and yet at night you can't see a light anywhere for miles away. It's as silent and dark as my parents' home in Saucier, MS. You have to swerve around piles of debris to view houses that are collapsed or warped or gutted. Many of the houses floated up then fell onto their piers, and are collapsing. Others stayed on the ground, but the roof floated, then fell onto the structure, either collapsing it or crinkling it like a can. Many houses, maybe most, look as though they could be gutted and repaired, and probably could, if the government and insurance companies provided a fraction of the money they promised.
Less severe than the Ninth and Lower ninth are the areas uptown and lakeside, around the 17th Street Canal--the second one to break, and the one that flooded most of commercial part of the city. Drive from Metarie, on the west side of the 17th Street Canal, where you can eat at Chili's or Chevy's and shop in a mall and live in nice, clean, dry houses, across the bridge to the New Orleans side, where there street lights are out, and the houses are flooded and gutted, and piles of debris wait in front of empty houses and businesses for FEMA to do what they are paid to do and begin the clean up and restoration. This part of the city could be livable and workable in a month or two with a little money and a little effort--both of which we have paid enough money to the feds to expect.
Pass Christian, MS, is one giant landfill. In some parts there are just blocks of debris--clothing, building materials, appliances, cars, trees, wire, street signs, rope, and stuff, all mixed with mud and washed like driftwood into heaps, so that you can't tell what was once a house, or a lot, or a subdivision, or even a road, since some of the blacktop has washed away. It's like nothing they've shown on television.
I want more people to see this. I want all Americans to drive through this area, through the Lower Ninth Ward, through Pass Christian and Waveland and Bay St. Louis. I especially want the Fundies who thank God for this devestation to have to view it, and then to have to explain to the former residents WHY god supposedly did this. Then I want Bush and Cheney and Hastert to ride through it, and then stand amongst the residents and explain why they lied, why they haven't delivered on the few meager promises they made after the hurricane, when BushCo visited the Coast nine times and promised he would not leave until "the end." I met a lot of Republicans who were wondering what "end" Bush met, too.
So no, I don't think the tours are insensitive. I want everyone to know how our government treats its people.
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