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September 07, 2005

Water World Saga: What’s Going Right

The sanctity of life

 

 

There’s been a lot of talk about the mistakes that have been made since the onset of the New Orleans lakefront real estate shift, but one thing that has gone right I think deserves a little more attention. The Department of Homeland Security is reporting that so far to this date over 32,000 people have been rescued, and 11.3 million meals have been provided (along with 18 million liters of water) to evacuees and the rescued, many of whom now add up to the 182,000 now being housed in the 559 shelters set up on their behalf.

 

In fact, I don’t recall a rescue operation of this magnitude ever being conducted – certainly none with this degree of success. I would like to see Russia, China or Cuba even come close (say, the next time a dam breaks, a mine collapses or some other disaster befalls due to faulty central planning, casually killing thousands; or there is a famine that kills 10 million).

 

The answer is that most countries don’t even try. And we know they don’t try because they do not value human life nearly as much as we do in the US. In fact, a friend of mine was in Thailand awhile back. He saw a man fall into the river and drown. Oh, there were police and passersby standing around and he struggled and called out for a good 20 minutes. But no one knew the man. It is true that New Orleans was slow to act to evacuate its citizens, and I guess that comes with the territory of being named “America’s only European city”. And what also came with the territory was that not enough of its citizens had cars with which to evacuate on their own. But even in this there is little to no doubt New Orleans faired far better than its namesake given the same conditions. After all, how many elderly were left to die during France's last two heatwaves? I shudder to think of how many weeks it would take Paris to get around to addressing a New Orleans-style problem.

 

In the meantime, the US has made history again, literally moving a city out of harm’s way. And who is there to take notice? Well, so far only those who will one day write for the history books in which many of the nay-sayers will only receive a dishonorable mention.

 

 

Posted by Martin at September 7, 2005 02:17 AM

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