living room think tank

Thursday, September 01, 2005

Katrina Disaster Relief

If you know anyone in or near the disaster area, or if you want to offer temporary housing, the following website has a well organized system of free housing offers for evacuees. It can be printed out for a wall poster to be put near pay phones, or for relief workers to bring in. I plan to see if the Red Cross knows about this effort.
http://www.katrinahome.com/
Another similar site:http://www.nola.com/forums/homesavailable/
I agree with this post at Daily Kos, that the government should get more buses in theres RIGHT AWAY by any means possible:
"You know what else I was thinking? Why didn't the government send every available bus to New Orleans to take everyone away who was stranded their. Surely a national emergency would allow the President to comandeer all the local Greyhound buses for this purpose."
Is it Wrong to Politicize a Disaster?
http://central-scrutinizer.dailykos.com/
"A lot of people are going to huff and bluster about making this disaster a political issue. Put bluntly, however, what government does and does not choose to spend money on for the essential safety of its citizens is a political issue, and a very basic one at that. The administration willfully reduced the budget for the protective levees around New Orleans to a level where even maintaining the current levee height was impossible, in order to shift that Corps money into Iraq. I'd say that's a political big deal."
Check out this article of Feb 16, 2004, in New Orleans CityBusiness:
Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen?

On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

This Salon article expands on how Bush policies also failed to protect the wetlands which would have mitigated this disaster.

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