Funmurphys: the Blog

The Long Shadow

Last night my wife asked me to change the channel on the Katrina coverage since it was too depressing. Death, destruction, the breakdown in order, all with little relief in sight. I suppose if I were a better writer, I could write something worth reading, but I'm not. So yes, by all means contribute to relief agencies like The Salvation Army which has done a great job at disaster relief for years.

Better that than bicker and backstab and rant and rave. There's a time and a place for all that, but not now. We need to work the priorities, and fault assessing doesn't rate highly at a time like this. I can respect the bitchiness of people actually trapped in the nightmare, not those on the outside who take any event as confirmation of their ongoing rightness.

Yes, it's frustrating to see how much bad it is, and wonder what's taking so long. But let's review. Something like million people have fled their homes. Something like 100,000 are left in New Orleans and need to get out. There's no power, areas are flooded, roads and bridges are out, and the people left have no transportation of their own. The states workers providing relief have suffered varying amounts of damage of their own. So what's the hold up? The latest holdup is the breackdown in order which has led to shots being fired at rescuers. I never thought it would come to his, but why not shoot looters, or at least people who shoot at law enforcement, refugee caravans, search and rescue operations, or menace hospitals.

Once we're past the crisis of saving people, we can recriminate to the cows come home, but we'll be faced with another issue - what are we going to do with 1 million refugees? What is going to happen to their lives? How many will return if it takes 4 months (or more) for the city to be drained, cleaned, and rebuilt? Who can sit out that long and not face financial ruin? And is that the best use of finite resources?