Jay Honeck wrote:
JH Why the hell were they there?


How many people have to tell these dumb asses to GET THE HELL OUT OF DODGE
when there is a Level 5 hurricane bearing down on them, before they actually
listen?


Bottom line: If I could sit here in Iowa, watching on TV as this big ol' bag
of Katrina whoop-ass bore inexorably down on the Gulf Coast, why couldn't
the people who actually LIVE THERE do the same thing?

I would have been in my plane/van/car/whatever, aimed north...

You are making several assumptions here that are not completely
justifiable. The first is that these people did not listen to the
warnings. There's a difference between wanting to get out of Dodge,
and being able to do so. This is also reflected in the assumption
indicated by your last statement - the assumption that these people
had a "plane/van/car/whatever" that they could take north. For a lot
of people in the city, the best they can afford is the public bus or
streetcar system.

And where are they going to go, even if they could go somewhere.
New Orleans is one of those places where you're a newcomer if your
family only goes back five generations, and where a relative is
"distant" because he lives on the other side of town. These people
don't have relatives they can stay with in other parts of the country
because their relatives are in the city with them - and have been for
many years. Staying in a motel is out of the question - when you're
living day-to-day you just can't afford the luxury.

There's also an emotional aspect to leaving that you, accustomed
as you are to travelling routinely throughout the country, won't
understand. A lot of these people have never been more than 25-30 miles
from the home they were raised in. They may be in harm's way, but
it's a familiar place. Even a lot of the middle-class inhabitants of the
city can't understand how someone could move so far away (like maybe
150 miles) from everything they grew up with and all their friends and
family. After all, if you're that far away aren't you in a different
country?

What you're doing is projecting your background onto people whose
background is nothing like yours. New Orleans is not Iowa, and people's
attitudes there are veru different from what you're used to. The
decisions you _think_ you would make might seem like the only rational
decisions, but the decisions the people in New Orleans made were just
as rational - for them. In most cases, it boils down to doing the best
you can when you don't have any options.