‘Never Again,’
Again
New York Times Editorial
21/09/08 "New
York Times" -- - Hurricane Gustav gave the state
of Louisiana a test for which it had three years to prepare.
There were thousands of poor, sick, disabled and elderly people
who could not get out on their own. They needed to be rescued
with dispatch, and sheltered in safety and dignity.
One simple test. The state flunked.
Three years to the week after Hurricane Katrina’s landfall,
Louisiana executed a fundamentally unfair evacuation plan and
did it badly. It relied on dividing the population into separate
streams : People with their own cars were directed to shelters
run by pa rishes, churches and the Red Cross. People with
medical problems not requiring hospitalization were taken to
special shelters. Sex offenders had a shelter to themselves.
All those without a car or a ride were taken on state buses to
four state-run warehouses. It was in these shelters, including
two abandoned stores, a Wal-Mart and a Sam’s Club, that
thousands of working-poor New Orleanians got a sickening
reminder of Katrina.
Evacuees said they had had no idea where they were going; bus
drivers would not tell them. When they arrived, there were not
enough portable toilets, and no showers. For five days there was
no way to bathe, except with bottled water in filthy outdoor
toilets. Privacy in the vast open space — 1,000 people to a
warehouse, shoulder-to-shoulder on cots — was nonexistent. The
mood among evacuees was grim, surrounded as they were by police
officers and the National Guard, with no visitors or reporters
allowed.
“We didn’t want to evacuate into a prison,” Lethia Brooks told
the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice, an
organization that accompanied the evacuees, inspected the
shelters and collected hundreds of stories into a report sharply
critical of the state’s response.
Gustav ended up being no Katrina, and the week of suffering was
not as severe as the deathly mayhem of three years ago. But
residents had every right to expect far better treatment than
they received. After a week of indignities in crowded,
unsanitary shelters, many returned home with their fragile
finances in turmoil. They had been forced to buy extra basics
while out of their homes, and September rent was due.
The secretary of Louisiana’s Department of Social Services,
which was responsible for the shelters, resigned after this
scandal and one involving problems with food stamp distribution.
Now, many poor residents are vowing “never again,” as in, “Never
again will we get on the bus to be warehoused. We’ll ride out
the next storm.” In New Orleans, disaster is never far away, and
government incompetence cannot be allowed to undermine a swift,
sure evacuation. Gov. Bobby Jin dal’s administration should move
quickly on a better plan that does not expose the poor to
differential, substandard treatment.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times CompanyClick on
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